


Lurking in the Mist

by sweettears90



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Death of OCs, F/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, being held against somebody's will, torture with a cattle prod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 17:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3298844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweettears90/pseuds/sweettears90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU; dark assassin story.<br/>"You remind me of Nimue, who foolishly fell in love with the man that she was tasked to kill. But at least Nimue had the common decency to, not only to kill The Merlin, but to also kill herself once he was dead. You couldn't even manage one of those things."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue and Chapter 1

He spots the woman eying him from across the bar, but of course, by the time that he actually puts his drink down and goes over to where she'd been sitting, the only thing that indicated that she'd been there at all was a ring of water from some drink.

He leaves the bar alone a bit after that, a little tipsy but not drunk. He thinks that he has to urinate halfway from the bar to his apartment, and side-steps into an alley.

As he relieves himself against the already piss-stained brick wall, he feels as if he is being watched. He looks a bit nervously over his shoulder; there's a black-clad figure in the mouth of the alley. The street light nearby is out, but all of the other lights work perfectly on the rest of the street. It was why he'd picked that alley in particular, rather than any other. He wishes that he hadn't, now.

He sees as something slender catches what little light that there is as the figure approaches him; he thinks that it is a gun.

He scrambles to tuck himself back into his pants and to move out from the way. But the figure is already there, on his other side, as if they had anticipated his move towards the back of the alley.

With some horror, he realizes that it was the woman who'd been eying him at the bar.

A slender knife slides easily into his chest, which punctures his heart and kills him instantly. His last thought before he dies is that he should have gone home with the leggy blonde with the giant tits.

They sky, which had been exceptionally dark and overcast the entire day, finally let loose all of the moisture that it had been holding. Within seconds, both the woman and the man, now dead, were completely soaked. The woman took a moment to crouch down by the prone figure of the man and wiped her stiletto blade free from blood on his tie. As she stands, she looks down at the man and wants to spit on him.

A man, who had brutally raped at least five women, and had walked on all charges thanks to his golden tongue.

She wants to spit on him. But she does not, because that would be leaving evidence at the crime scene. A giant no-no in every criminal's hand book… especially those who deal out swift death.

Instead, she just carefully side-steps his body and quickly leaves the scene. Nobody notices her passing at all. She is a ghost who lives in the shadows.

By the time that the sun starts to rise, the police and crime scene units are crowding into the tiny alley, trying to figure out who the man is, why and how he died, and who did it.

But the woman is already long gone.

* * *

Chapter 1

Bella carefully slid her fingers into the tiny crack in the window and eased it open before she slipped inside the room and closed the window again. She locked it behind her because, hey, this was New York; you never knew what kind of creep would come crawling through a girl's bedroom window.

Once inside, she peeled off her black, leather gloves, which concealed latex gloves that were covered with blood. She tossed both onto plastic sheet on the other side of her bed, before she pulled off the rest of her outfit. Both gloves would be carefully burned to conceal evidence, and her outfit would be carefully inspected for any stray drops of blood.

It had been 631 days since Bella had last been sloppy enough to get blood on her clothes, and she wasn't about to break that streak now. But still, it didn't hurt to be careful. You never know when the police might find a stray hair that had fallen out of her ponytail, find a witness who remembered her face…

The last pair of boots that Bella had burned was because she'd accidentally stepped in a puddle of the victim's blood as she left the scene. The police had come very close to grabbing her because of her insistence of buying custom boots for her jobs. After that, it was back to generic boot purchases. The police would not be able to ID her if a thousand other ladies also bought those boots in New York alone.

After a quick but scalding shower, Bella stood over the kitchen sink and started to clean her knives. Her roommate, Rosalie, wandered into the room; an unlit cigarette was clenched between her teeth and she was only wearing a worn camisole and panties. "Tough night," Rose said around her cigarette as she searched for her lighter. "Are you just getting in?"

"Yeah," Bella agreed.

"Then both myself and Em should make ourselves-" A knock sounded at the door before Rosalie could finish her sentence. "Too late," she said with a giggle. She snatched her pink Barbie lighter from the counter on the other side of where Bella stood and skipped off to her bedroom. Bella stashed her knives, bloody sponge, and protective gloves (which would also be burned later) under the sink and went to answer the door. It was Victoria– not like Bella was overly surprised to see her. The red-head burst into the apartment without permission. As Bella closed and locked the door, Victoria pulled a thick wad of cash out from her Dolce and Gabbana purse and tossed it onto the coffee table.

"Good work, but I wouldn't have expected anything less from my little Odette," Victoria said. She flashed Bella a smile; it was the closest thing that Bella had ever gotten to parental praise since she was 12. Victoria sat down on the ragged sofa, fished her cigarette case out from her bag, selected one, and lit it up. Rosalie smoked, too, but the difference between their smoking habits was the difference between a $5 Barbie and a Limited Edition Mint-in-Box Collector's Barbie. "I have another client for you, if you're feeling up to the task."

"Another one?" Bella asked. She was itching to grab the wad of cash and count it out. It would probably last her for at least a month if Rosalie accepted a job, too, and if the two of them lived frugally. Bella didn't like to take job after job; she wanted for the police to forget about her last job… for the case to fall onto the back burner as more pressing cases happened. After all, if she went on a killing spree, her five-year record of assassinations might be shattered. She would get sloppy, start leaving clues behind. Get caught.

"It's an undercover mission," Victoria said.

"You're talking to the wrong person, Victoria," Bella scoffed. She reached over for the stack of money, but Victoria grabbed Bella's wrist before Bella could touch it.

"No, I am not. If I wanted to talk to Rosalie, I would have," Victoria said. The thought had occurred to Bella, too. Victoria did not make mistakes. It was why she was the current Black Lord in New York, and had been for over ten years. She didn't make stupid mistakes like putting the wrong person on a specific assignment. Every little thing that she did was not without calculation. "This job would require me to give you an allowance of one grand a week."

Bella liked the way that she lived. People didn't notice her, which was perfect for her job. If she started to buy designer clothes and buy new furniture from somewhere other than Ikea, people might start to take notice. She didn't want to take another job so soon, especially not if it meant that she'd be undercover for a long period of time.

She briefly wondered what Rose would say on the issue, and the voice inside of Bella's head that had permanently taken on the tone of her best friend instantly chimed up. Yes, it sucks to have to go undercover, but undercover operations take months, years even to set up enough trust to get close to the person. In the meantime, Bella would just sit back in some set-up apartment, live the good life, and pretend to be somebody that she's not.

The last issue was both a pro and a con in Bella's opinion. She hated falling into routines. She wouldn't be able to accept any other jobs while she was undercover, either.

But, this job was likely very high profile. Bella might get some decent exposure in the criminal world.

But if the job was that high profile, and if she was hanging around the person she was to kill, the police would likely start asking her questions. And if she just vanished without a trace, that would look even more suspicious. And Bella loved New York; she didn't want to leave because some stupid client of Victoria's wanted some politician or something dead.

In the end, the cons vastly outweighed the pros in Bella's mind. "No, I'm not interested," she said. She grabbed the money off from the table.

"I haven't even told you the guy's name," Victoria said as she blew smoke out from her nose. Bella started to walk to her bedroom, but paused when Victoria said two simple words: "Edward Cullen."

Edward Cullen, the annoyance of real celebrities everywhere. Considered among the type of celebrity status as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, Edward Cullen was famous for being famous. Nobody knew where he'd come from, but one day, the world seemed to realize that his face was splashed all over the tabloids at the grocery store (the kind that everybody looks at but nobody buys), all over celebrity gossip shows, all over the internet.

From day one, he'd struck Bella as the douche-baggy party-boy who used girls like somebody with hay fever used tissues. She tried very hard not to pay attention to things like celebrities, let alone "people who were famous for being famous", but he always somehow managed to worm his way into her lexicon.

Her hands tightened into fists and the metal clip that held the money together dug painfully into her palm. Victoria seriously knew what she was doing; Bella had complained about the faux-celebrity to her mentor and mother-figure often enough.

Bella heard Victoria stand up, drop something else onto the coffee table. A moment later, she was gone. Bella didn't want to take the stupid case. She wanted to sit in her room, count out her money, finish cleaning her knives, burn everything, and then sleep for a week straight.

"That was a long conversation," Rosalie said. "Did she give you another job?" It was a rule that assassins didn't look into the assigned jobs given to them, even if the files were left out on the coffee table.

"I'm not going to take it," Bella said as she vanished into her room.

She counted out the money from the job. She finished cleaning her knives and stored them under the loose floorboard under her bed. She put sponge and all six gloves into the tiny oven in the kitchen and stood over it to watch them all burn. She checked her clothes for blood and was pleased to find none. Rosalie made sandwiches and Bella had one.

As Bella reached for a second sandwich, Rosalie finally asked, "Why is there an Us Weekly in the folder that Victoria gave you? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry, but it was sitting on the coffee table on top of some tax return papers and there was the magazine in there."

"What?" Bella asked. With the sandwich in her mouth, she went into the little living room area and opened the file folder. No, there was probably something else about the assignment in there, too. But there wasn't anything but the magazine. It was from a few months ago, and Edward Cullen was on the cover.

"Does it have something to do with your assignment?" Rose asked as she leaned against the door frame in the kitchen.

"I haven't accepted it yet," Bella said without taking her eyes off from Edward's. His green eyes seemed to look at her, no matter which way she turned the magazine. He had several day's worth of stubble, his hair looked like he hadn't washed it in some time and that he'd literally never heard of a comb, and he was wearing a black, leather jacket over a Rolling Stones t-shirt. He still looked like a pretentious douche-bag to Bella.

Bella rolled the magazine up and went into her room. She shook the magazine out in the hopes that something would fall out— something that Victoria had slipped between the glossy pages in relation to the mission. But the only thing that came out was one of those magazine insert forms to order more magazines. Bella picked it up and was about to toss it in the trash when she noticed that the toll-free number had been scratched out and, in Victoria's neat handwriting, another number had been written in instead.

Bella took one last look at Edward's picture before she grabbed her latest phone off from the end of the bed and quickly dialed the number on the card. She had to physically turn her back on the magazine. "I'm in," was all that she said.

"Two hours, not bad," Victoria said. "I would have given up on you after 12. Time is of the essence right now, where this job is concerned. Meet me at the Starbucks five blocks from your apartment in one hour." It was just common sense to never discuss jobs over the phone— literally anybody could be listening.

Bella replaced her soft shorts and tank-top for skinny jeans and a Glass Spider Tour t-shirt. She threw her hair up, grabbed her sunglasses and purse, and was out the door with a quick, "I'm leaving!" to Rosalie.

Bella was not the kind of person who frequented Starbucks. That place was for hipsters who enjoyed the thought of paying over $5 for a cup of sub-par coffee that the baristas likely spat in before they were handed over. Bella bought some chamomile tea and said that her name was Elizabeth. She sat at a slightly sticky table against the far wall and watched the door carefully.

When Victoria came in, she nodded slightly to her young protege, and when Victoria had been given her coffee, Bella stood up to leave the cafe at the same time that Victoria did. Anybody who watched either of them leave would never have guessed that the two ladies knew one another. Bella was busy looking through old messages from Rose on her phone while Victoria pretended to have a phone conversation. "You will pick Mr. Cullen up from the airport on Friday," Victoria said after they'd walked away from the coffee shop. "His New York schedule coordinator has had a rather unfortunate accident. Of course, it's nothing that Ms. Swan can't handle, though."

"I don't have experience," Bella protested with her head down. She saw an old text that Rose had sent her; it had been funny at the time, but now, Bella was in no mood to laugh.

"You give him tickets to see Lion King on Broadway and if he wants to go to the Statue of Liberty, you call ahead to make sure that they know that he's coming," Victoria snapped. "It's honestly not that hard. We're going to do all of the grunt work for you, so it's not like you'll have to lift a finger to do much for him."

"You want me to play tour guide to some rich S.O.B?" Bella asked with a wrinkle of her nose. "How is this supposed to help?"

"Honestly, Odette. Did you not read the article in the magazine?"

"No."

"Playing tour guide is only a small portion of the assignment. The rest is for you to be your usual, charming self and to win his heart."

"I still think that you're talking to the wrong person."

"Read the article, please," Victoria insisted. Bella rolled her eyes, but made a mental note to read it as soon as she got home. "He'll have no choice but to fall for you."

"What is my first task?" Bella asked. It was too late to back out now. Victoria paused, pulled a key out from her purse and handed it to Bella; there was a small notecard with the address attached to the keyring.

"Your new apartment. And since I just paid you, you will need to buy some new clothes." Victoria gave Bella's outfit a once over; the disdain in her eyes was obvious. "Bella Swan, private event coordinator to the stars who wish to see New York, does not wear… tacky Glass Spider Tour t-shirts and flip-flops." Bella scowled at Victoria— people who insulted David Bowie had no room in her life— but remained silent on the matter. "I will leave the flight information in the apartment, as well as the plans that he'd already made with the previous coordinator. Good day to you." Victoria quickly walked away.

Bella shoved the key into her pocket and went the opposite way.

* * *

"Rose, I need to borrow your suitcase for an indefinite amount of time."

"Um…"

"It's about this job."

"You don't take undercover jobs, babe."

"This one is different. Can I borrow it or not?"

"Yeah, sure." Rose got up off the couch and went to the front closet to find her suitcase. It was, like most everything that Rose owned, Barbie-doll pink and covered with a wide array of decals from the places that Rose's jobs had taken her over her career as an assassin. "Where are you headed, anyway?"

"Somewhere in Upper East Side."

"Fancy. Want to borrow some of my things?"

"Thanks, but as soon as I take some of my things over there, I'm going to go on a quick shopping spree," Bella said.

"Lucky. I wish more of my jobs required me to go on shopping sprees so that I could fit into Upper East Side social life."

"Maybe if you started accepting more jobs in the first place…" Bella said as she vanished into her bedroom with Rose's suitcase. She tossed the suitcase onto the bed, and then picked up the magazine— she'd burnt the insert with Victoria's latest number over the stove before she left, even though she knew that within the week, Victoria would have a new number anyway. The front cover boasted "Exclusive Interview with Edward Cullen!" Bella didn't know much about Edward, but wondered why he'd demean himself to a shitty magazine like Us. The only reason she could think of was that they'd somehow offered him the most money.

Bella sat on the floor under her window and flipped to the interview in question. The interview started off by asking Edward about the home that he'd just bought in a suburb of London. Bella honestly couldn't care less about the square footage of the stupid place, how much it cost, and how close it was to things. And she didn't think that this part was what Victoria had been talking about when she'd asked Bella to read the interview.

She skimmed the article until the reporter asked: AW: And what about the women in your life?

EC: You mean my mom or my sister?

AW: Well, yes, but I'm talking about asking for all of the ladies who will read this article.

EC: Oh. Yes, that. I'm still not seeing anybody since my break-up with Tanya last year.

AW: And why's that? Are you still not over her?

EC: It's a lot more complicated than me being over somebody or not. For the sake of Tanya's privacy, I'm not going to answer that. It will remain between the two of us.

AW: I see. But let's just say that you were to meet the perfect woman, let's just say, tomorrow. What would she look like?

EC: I'm not entirely certain about that? I mean, I can't say that I've honestly thought about it. I think that she'd be a brunette, though.

AW: And while you haven't given much though on her physical appearance, surely you've thought about the type of woman that you're looking for?

EC: Yeah, probably. I know that people think of me as this who-cares party-boy, but that isn't all of what makes me… me.

Bella snorted at that. It sounded like this guy got his life philosophy from a book he bought at the dollar store.

EC: So while the fun, pretty, party girls are nice, it's not who I'm looking for. Besides, I'm not so sure that any of those girls are the long-term relationship type girls, you know? I want a girl who's interested in classical music, to sit with me through a ballet without once checking her phone, who will just curl up next to me on a rainy Saturday afternoon with a cup of tea and a good book.

EC: At the insistence of my father, I've been playing the piano since I was five years old. I want somebody who understands the background that I've had, and wants me for just more than my money. Somebody who looks at me and sees somebody more than just the rich, famous party-boy.

"If any of that is actually true, Mr. Cullen, I will gladly eat my hat," Bella muttered under her breath as she flipped to the next page. There was a full-page spread of pictures, continued from the photo shoot that they'd used for the front cover, but with the backgrounds still in tact. One of Edward sulking by a lounger by a pool, another of Edward sulking with his jacket thrown over his shoulder oh-so-casually by a post on the porch. "Honestly, doesn't this guy have any other facial expressions other than 'my mom just took away my favorite toy'?"

But still. There was probably some truth to the interview, or Victoria wouldn't have asked for Bella to read it as research for the roll that she'd be stepping in to. Or at least, so Victoria thought.

Huffing with annoyance, Bella tossed the magazine aside and started to throw her favorite clothes into the suitcase. She had a new apartment to look over and new things to buy

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Bella both hated and loved crowds. In a crowd, it was easy to get lost if the need should come up. However, when there are more people around, the more likely it is that somebody will remember her. Today, she especially loathed crowds, because the reason why the crowd was at the airport there was the same reason why she was.

Girls pressed against the police barrier in front of the terminal Edward would be coming into in a few minutes, and held up signs that said disturbing messages such as “Marry me, Edward!” Bella had once watched a documentary on Ziggy Stardust that showed the crazed fans who’d lined up to see the “alien” pop star. Obsessing over a British man who shaved off his eyebrows and pretended to be a space alien seemed sane in comparison to the lengths that these people were going to. At least there was a very obvious reason for David Bowie’s fame; not so much with Edward Cullen. 

The guy literally just had to exist and girls went nuts over him. Bella did not understand these people. 

Once, when Bella was 20, she’d been given a job of assassinating a psychotherapist. Part of the assignment had obviously been to pretend to be one of his clients in order to get close to him. After an odd hour of Bella crying about her dead parents, the man had explained to Bella that she suffered from extreme emotional detachment. This likely stemmed from the fact that her parents had died when she was very young, and then had been badly abused at the hands of her surviving relatives until she managed to escape. He had wanted to discuss her abuse in the next session, maybe sometime next week? He hadn’t lived for another hour after Bella’s session. 

It was something that was on Bella’s mind frequently. She knew perfectly well that she wasn’t like normal people. She’d been trained by Victoria to be a calculating killer. Assassins who empathized with their victims ended up getting sloppy, and sloppy assassins got caught. This was basic Assassin 101 stuff, here. 

But even in Bella’s emotionally stunted mind, she realized that there was something completely abnormal with obsessing over a man like this. Even if he was famous, rich, and moderately good looking, Edward Cullen literally had no idea that any of those girls on the other side of the police barrier existed beyond the group. He would never recognize any of them if they walked up to him on the street on some later date. 

But, all of those people were outside. Bella was inside, past the security gate thanks to a card that Victoria had provided for her, and was standing just outside of the customs gate. As she watched, a large man who wore a stark suit came out from one of the rooms. Bella feigned disinterest in the man, but secretly watched him. She didn’t know who he was, but he was acting super shifty, which instantly put her on alert. 

Much to her surprise, after the guy had looked around the area, he headed over towards her. “Are you Ms. Swan?” he asked in a curt, Southern accent. 

“I am. And you are?” Bella asked with caution. She didn’t like not knowing what was going on. 

“Jasper Hale, head of Mr. Cullen’s security team.” He held out a large hand, which Bella quickly accepted. Of course Edward had a security team; it was a stupid over-sight that Bella should have thought of. But why hadn’t Victoria told her about this little aspect? “Mr. Cullen is going through customs; he should be finished in a moment. After that, we’re going to move outside to the limo, and then head straight to the Towers.” This, Bella had been expecting. She knew from the details that Victoria had left for her in the apartment that Edward was to stay at one of the most lavish hotels in all of New York. After all, when you have all of the money in the world, why would you want to stay at a Best Western?

A moment later, as promised by Jasper, Edward came out into the main area of the airport. Jasper was quick to usher both Edward and Bella over to the connected parking structure, and into a limo that was waiting for them. “Ah, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Hardly any paparazzi,” Edward said once we were inside the back of the limo. 

“Ah, but there was a very large crowd of girls standing in front of the airport,” Bella said with disinterest as she looked out the window. 

“Even when we don’t release my travel plans, they somehow always know when I’m coming,” Edward said with a little chuckle. “Although, on the other hand, I have heard rumors that they camp out in front of the airport.”

“Because the girls who barely look old enough to drive holding signs that beg for you to marry them weren’t creepy enough as it was?” Bella asked dryly. Edward laughed. 

“I’m sorry; I don’t think that I caught your name,” Edward said.

“Bella Swan.” It was best to tell people as few lies as possible, so that one didn’t get tripped up remembering the small details, like a fake name. Besides, Bella Swan was somebody who only existed at the whims of Victoria. Today, she was the event coordinator to the stars. 

The real Isabella Swan had not existed since she was 12.

“I’m your event coordinator.”

“What happened to Kim?” Edward asked with a slightly puzzled look.

“I’m afraid that Ms. Clayton slipped in the tub and broke her leg. Nothing serious, mind you, but she cannot be following celebrities all around New York on crutches.” Or at least, this was what Victoria had told Bella. In this instance, it wasn’t exactly a lie if Bella didn’t know for certain Kimberly Clayton’s status. 

Although, considering her line of work, Bella was willing to bet that something more unfortunate and permanent had happened to the lady.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Edward said. “Please send her my regards and wish her a speedy recovery.”

“I will do that,” Bella said with a slight nod of her head. In reality, she had no way of contacting the lady, even if she was still alive.

“Kim said that she got me tickets to Lion King, but that was only under the insistence of my sister, Alice,” Edward went on.

“She did, and I have them,” Bella said. “But there didn’t appear to be anything else in her calendar for your trip.”

“No,” Edward agreed. “This is my first trip to New York since I was little. I sort of just want to play things by ear, and do a bunch of touristy things.”

“Touristy things,” Bella repeated with a cocked eyebrow.

“Yeah. You know, like to see the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Time Square, stuff like that.”

“So helpful,” Bella deadpanned. 

“Sorry,” Edward said as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. A moment later, the limo shook slightly as the trunk was closed, and then the driver got in behind the wheel. The limo pulled away from the curb and a moment later, came out by where Edward’s fans were. 

“Edward! Edward! We love you!” the girls screamed as the limo drove past. 

“They can’t even see in here,” Edward said as he watched the mob with disinterest until they were past. “I’ll bet that they scream at all of the limos who drive past.” Bella gave a snort of amusement, and Edward turned his attention back to her. “Besides, aren’t you supposed to be the event coordinator here? It’s your job to find me things to do.”

“Yes, but I like it when my clients have something a bit more specific in mind. Like, ‘hey, let’s go to the Museum of Modern Art’ or ‘It would be fun to take a carriage ride through Central Park’.”

“Both of those sound amazing,” Edward said. “But I think that it would be weird for me and Jasper to go on a romantic carriage ride together. Maybe some other time, then.”

“Well, then, we can put in a tour of the museum for tomorrow, if you’re up for it?” Bella said as she pulled up the calendar on her phone. She supposed that normal event coordinators had very little open dates because of their work, but the only thing on Bella’s calendar at the moment was currently “Lion King Broadway with EC”. Earlier, there had been a note about meeting Edward at the airport… not like she could have possibly forgotten about that, though. Bella quickly typed in an entry for tomorrow, and then shot a message to Victora’s liaison that Bella had been instructed to coordinate all events with. Then, she looked back up at Edward. “Since this is my first time working with you, and since my taking on this job was exceptionally last-minute, please, Mr. Cullen, don’t be afraid to come to me for anything that you need or want.”

“Please, call me Edward.”

“Yes, of course,” Bella said. It was only her rigid training that kept the sneer off from her face.

“I’m just sort of tired from the flight and I’d like to go to the hotel room to rest up for Lion King tonight. It’s probably stupid as anything, but Alice insisted that I needed to see it and tell her all about it when I got back,” Edward said. Bella nodded her head and pretended like she was interested in what he had to say, but in reality, she could not care less about Edward’s stupid sister. “You’ve seen it though, right? I mean, you probably go with all of your clients to Broadway Shows every other day.”

“I actually haven’t,” Bella said truthfully. “I haven’t been working for the company for all that long.”

“Then it will be a new experience for both of us, I suppose,” Edward said with a lopsided grin. Bella was spared from having to come p with something else to say when the limo pulled up in front of The Towers. The doorman rushed to open the door for them, and Edward, being on the right side of the car, slid out first. Bella scrolled through old messages with Rosalie on the rather silent and awkward elevator ride up to Edward’s suite with Edward and Jasper. 

The giant doors for the suite were the only things on the floor, and the three of them quickly went inside. Bella had seen some exceptionally lavish things in her life, but none completely over-the-top as the two-story suite. There was even a stupid baby grand piano tucked into the corner. 

“Oh, I honestly thought that they were kidding on the website,” Edward said and motioned towards the piano. He went over and gently trailed his slender fingers over the black, lacquered wood. Then, he pulled the bench out, sat down, and gently started to stroke the keys absently, not quite playing, but producing sound, nonetheless. He paused, his fingers poised over the keys, and looked to Bella. “Do you play?”

“I played the clarinet for many years, but I haven’t even played that in a while,” Bella said. Victoria had been insistent that there might be one point in every assassins life when having the knowledge of a musical instrument would be crucial to some assignment. Bella had been tutored every day for an hour on the clarinet and had only been allowed to stop after she’d “graduated”. 

“That’s a shame. You should never stop playing. Even if it’s just for yourself. Music is so great; it makes me feel better in a way that no drug ever could.” His fingers finally pressed down the opening chords to Beethoven’s Hammerklavier. 

Bella had to admit that she was impressed. The song was exceptionally complex and was very far away from the Chopsticks Waltz that she’d been expecting. But still, any parent could convince their child to take piano— or clarinet— lessons. It didn’t really mean anything.

“Hey Ed,” Jasper said from upstairs. Edward’s fingers stilled above the keys, and both he and Bella looked up. “I thought that you were gonna take a nap.”

“How many times must I ask that you not call me Ed?” Edward said. He fisted his hands and stood up. “And I do not take naps; I’m not five.”

“No, but you did just take an eight-hour flight without any sleep. And I don’t think that-” 

“That’s enough,” Edward barked. He looked over to Bella and offered her a wane smile. “Thank you, but this should be all until tonight.”

“Very well. You have my number, should anything come up between now and the show at 8,” Bella said. She turned around and quickly left the room. She paused for a second after she’d closed the doors— she could hear Jasper and Edward talking inside, and Edward sounded very angry, but she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. 

The elevator made a slight noise, and Bella hurried away from Edward’s suite so as to not look quite so guilty standing and trying to listen in on their conversations. I should have gotten some bugs and planted them in the room, she mused as the elevator took her down to the lobby. Another time, perhaps. After all, Edward was going to stay for at least a month. Plenty of time for Bella to plant some bugs and learn some insider-information about the man.

 

* * *

The apartment that Victoria had given to Bella was too empty and cold, despite the fact that it was June. Bella tossed her bag onto the table by the door, flopped down onto the sofa, and kicked off her shoes. Even the sofa was all wrong— too short, too hard, and lumpy in all of the wrong places. She grabbed her phone out from her jacket pocket and sent a text to Rosalie.

“I hate this stupid job,” she wrote. 

“I don’t even know why you took it,” Rosalie replied a moment later. “You’ve been doing nothing but bitching about EC ever since you accepted it.”

“Greater good, Rose.”

“I know that, but you HATE these kinds of jobs.”

“I know, I know!” Bella quickly wrote back. She tossed her phone onto the coffee table, and then snatched it back up a second later. “Sometimes, I think that Vic should have asked you, because you’re much better with this type of thing.”

“Vic doesn’t make mistakes,” Rose replied several minutes later. 

“I keep telling myself that. But how old is she getting to be now, though? Maybe she’s slipping.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that, lol,” Rose said. “Em and I are gonna go hit up the matinee and then grab some dinner. Have fun at Lion King!!”

“As if,” Bella muttered to herself as she tossed her phone aside again. She knew that Rosalie was being sarcastic about the entire thing, and didn’t feel like replying to the obvious jab. 

She sat up and looked around the apartment. It was decorated in what was called “retro with a modern twist”: the wall before her was decorated with a teal and black paisley pattern, and a Le Klint 172 pendant lamp illuminated the room. The kitchen was decorated in the same way, as was the bedroom and bath, only in shades of pink and white instead of teal and black. 

This wasn’t Bella, but as she closed her eyes, she thought back to the psychotherapist that she’d killed. It had been five years ago that she’d killed the man, but still, she couldn’t get him out of her mind.

“Just who is Bella Swan?” he’d asked her almost minutes after he’d invited her into his office to begin the secession. Bella Swan, lonely soul who was in need of somebody to talk to, had a perfectly scripted answer to reply with. 

Bella Swan, trained assassin, did not. Bella Swan, trained assassin, liked whatever her current job required that she liked. She liked it so much that it became a part of her and she no longer remembered if she’d originally liked listening to David Bowie’s strange instrumental music while reading horror novels. She no longer remembered if her favorite food had always been orange chicken from Peking Express and if her favorite movie was Groundhog Day. 

She wondered what the doctor might have had to say about Bella if she’d told him about what had happened to her after she’d left Michigan. About Victoria, the Black Chapter, her training to become an assassin. 

Considering that her job was to know people, to recognize the emotions in their face, to see their movements seconds before they acted, Bella didn’t know all that much about psychology. She couldn’t begin to even guess at what sort of mental disorders that she might (and probably did) have.

Bella heaved a frustrated sigh and raked a hand through her hair. She could sit all day long and puzzle over these questions, but she’d only just get no where. Victoria had trained her entirely too well to be a completely blank slate, ready to be wiped clean at a moment’s notice.

She didn’t even know how she felt about the retro styling of the apartment, if she hated it or not. And this was because she didn’t know what Edward Cullen liked. 

Instead of trying to figure out if she liked paisley or not, Bella got up and went to take a shower so that she’d be ready for meeting Edward at the theater. 


	3. Chapter 3

It would be good to be seen out in public with Edward Cullen. Bella wasn’t entirely certain where Victoria wanted for her relationship with the man to go from where it already was, but she wasn’t completely stupid. She knew from the pictures of Edward that graced the covers of countless tabloids, his interview in Us Weekly wasn’t the only one that Victoria could have picked to give to Bella. 

Victoria did not do things without reason. There was a reason why Victoria had asked Bella to read the interview, and it wasn’t about Edward’s new house in London. 

When Bella saw Edward’s limo drive up behind the theater, she tried to act nonchalant and pretended to be sending important messages on her phone. She wasn’t good with getting men to fall for her— that was Rose’s thing. 

“I was honestly expecting for there to be much more children running around,” Edward said as he walked over to where Bella stood. 

“This isn’t the main part of the theater,” Bella reminded him. 

“Right, most people probably can’t afford to get box seats for a shitty Disney musical,” Edward said.

“Mr. Cullen?” said an attendant who’d shown Bella to the private area of the theater. “Your seats are right this way. Would you like anything to eat or drink?”

“Not right now, thank you,” Edward said as the group followed the lady through a short hall and they came out into the box. Bella didn’t have much experience with theater, but even she had to admit that the seats were exceptionally nice. They were up high enough that most of the people who were sitting in the main section didn’t notice them, but close enough to the stage where they wouldn’t have to strain their eyes to see. 

Jasper stood just inside the doorway while Edward and Bella settled into their seats; there were four other empty seats in the box with them. “Ah, there’s all of the children,” Edward said as he craned his neck forward to see the people below. The lights dimmed and after a moment, the theater fell quiet. 

 

* * *

“It wasn’t that bad,” Edward said after the performers had finished taking their final bow. “I’m still annoyed at Alice for talking me into seeing it.”

“If you didn’t want to see it, why did you just tell her that you weren’t going to see it?” Bella asked with some confusion. 

“No,” Edward said as he gave her a sharp look. “No. You don’t understand my sister. When she gets it into her mind that something needs to happen, it happens. Regardless of your wishes, it happens.”

“I’m sorry, but she sounds like a real piece of work,” Bella said with a thoughtful frown. 

“She is, but I somehow feel contractually obligated to love her because she’s my little sister,” Edward said. “People don’t hear as much about her as they do me, though. She’s into fashion, and our father is helping her to start up her own line. Maybe in a year or two, you’ll be getting tickets to Alice Cullen’s fashion show for New York Fashion Week.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Bella said absently. If Edward managed to become famous for literally existing, then it would make sense that Alice would become famous, too. Of course, it made sense to become famous for having amazing fashion creations— even Bella knew names like Giorgio Armani and Donatella Versace. Of course, it was likely that Alice would hang onto the coat-tails of Edward’s fame and use it to launch her own career. Bella wasn’t even interested in fame, and that seemed like a good idea.

Bella grabbed her phone from her bag and turned it on, only to find several new messages from Rosalie. “Hakuna matata,” read one. “In the jungle, the the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight,” another one read. 

“What?” Edward asked her after he watched Bella’s face display more and more annoyance the longer she looked at her phone. 

“It’s just my friend,” Bella said as she shoved her phone back into her purse. “She thinks that it’s funny to harass me about Lion King.”

“What do you mean?” Edward asked with some confusion.

“She sent me a bunch of texts with Lion King lyrics,” Bella said with a roll of her eyes. “She thinks that she’s just so funny and clever, but she’s not. Not really.” Edward laughed. 

“She sounds like a great friend to have, though,” Edward said. “I was pretty isolated growing up, and I think that Jasper is probably the closest thing to a friend that I’ve got. Outside of my family, I mean.”

“Rose is like a sister to me,” Bella said absently. “Sometimes, I wonder why we’re even friends. I think that we remain close due to convenience and the fact that we’ve relied upon nobody else for such a long time.” Bella had no idea why she’d told Edward that. She’d never even really told Rose about her feelings. 

“I suppose that that makes sense,” Edward said. “I sometimes feel like I’d like to give Alice back to the hospital, but I’m stuck with her. A friend who is like your sister is probably the best sort of relationship, because you had a choice to pick her out, and she chose you, too.”

That was the biggest bunch of bullshit that Bella had ever heard. But then again, she didn’t exactly tell him that she’d only been introduced to Rosalie when Victoria put Bella in the dorm room with the blonde. The two of them stuck together because they couldn’t exactly tell other people about what they did for a living. As much as Bella complained about the jobs that she did to Rose, Rose complained to Bella about her own jobs. 

“It’s been fifteen minutes since the show ended,” Edward said as he consulted the clock on his phone. “Shall we go and pretend to be tourists?” Bella agreed, and Jasper followed the two of them into the main lobby. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as it probably had been right after the show had ended, but there were still groups of school children and people lingering for some reason or another.

“There he is!” somebody screamed on the other side of the room, and the next thing Bella knew, she was surrounded by a mob of people. “Edward! Edward! How long are you going to be in New York for? How did you enjoy the show? Who is this, Edward?”

“Come on, sir,” Bella heard Jasper say to his employer, and she pushed through the crowd of people so that she wouldn’t be left behind. 

“They always seem to find out where I am at any given time,” Edward said as soon as they were in the limo. “Somebody below must have seen me, tweeted about it, and then…” He shrugged absently. “Too bad, too, because I wanted to buy a t-shirt.”

“The lady will get you one,” Bella insisted. “Or they could send one over for you.”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same,” Edward said with a slight pout. “Most of the time, my fame is a real curse.” A thousand snide remarks popped into Bella’s head, but she refrained from saying any of them. He fiddled with his phone for a moment before he returned his attention back to Bella. “Will you come to a party with me?”

“Um…” Victoria had told Bella to get close to Edward and to gain his trust. It was part of step one of whatever grand plan that she had for Edward’s assassination. But Bella knew the sort of parties that Edward frequented (or at least, according to TMZ). It was the kind of place where you went to be seen… and to shake a tail. 

“Come on, Bella,” Edward pleaded with her. “It’ll be fun.”

“I’m not exactly dressed for that kind of a party,” Bella said after a moment.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll just have a couple of drinks and leave. I don’t know many people in New York right now, only just some friends of cousins of friends of college roommate’s friends.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Things like that. But if I go there and meet some new people, they’ll help me get in with the right sort of crowd for better parties. Of which, there will likely be prior notice to.”

Something about the way that Edward spoke told Bella that he’d had plenty of advanced warning for this party, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why it was. “If you’re sure that this is alright,” she said after a moment, and indicated her tan blazer and skirt. Edward’s eyes, seemingly much darker than usual in the dark back of the limo, roved Bella’s outfit. 

“No, it’s fine. This will be the last last minute party, I promise,” Edward said, and then leaned forward to talk to the driver. 

As an assassin, Bella had been taught how to go with the flow. You never know when the subject’s schedule might take a drastic change, for whatever reason. And as somebody who had to remain in the proverbial shadows at all times, Bella had to adapt quickly. 

They heard the deep bass of music before the limo had pulled to a complete stop and Jasper opened the door. Edward tugged Bella out from the back, and inside the dingy, graffiti-covered building; they completely bypassed the line and the bouncer let the three of them inside without any hesitation. 

The actual club was downstairs, and as Bella stood at the top of the stairs with Edward and Jasper, she liked what she saw. This was the kind of place where somebody could be killed in the corner and nobody would realize that he’d been dead until probably about noon. Bodies writhed on the dance floor; strobe lights flashed and turned people a rainbow of colors for a brief second before the light changed to the next color. 

Bella followed Edward down into the throng of bodies, but lost sight of him almost at once. Not good. She hadn’t thought that he would convince her to come if he’d only planned on losing her in the crowd. After all, she knew where he was staying, and could easily track him down even if he did move to another hotel based simply on his status as a celebrity. 

A moment later, Edward was back, and he handed Bella something in a cup. She thought that it might have been clear, but it was hard to tell. She took a quick sniff while she pretended to take a sip and identified it as vodka. It didn’t take assassin training to tell Bella that this was probably not the best place to become inebriated. Or to drink from open containers. 

Edward leaned in close to her and his hot breath against the side of her neck made her jump a little with discomfort. “Let’s dance,” he practically screamed in her ear. The loud, thumping bass made it difficult to hear anything. Bella nodded quickly in agreement and put her cup down on a random table that they passed on their way towards the dance floor. 

Bella might, at times, have difficulty figuring out what she liked and disliked outside of her job. This was not one such time. The primal press of half-naked, sweaty strangers all around her made her super uncomfortable. The music was too loud and she couldn’t even figure out if it was supposed to be rock, pop, rap, or something else all together. 

Edward pressed against her from behind and put his hands on her hips. He moved in time to the music, and because of their exceptionally close proximity, Bella was forced into motion as well. After a moment, Edward’s slender fingers plucked at the top button of Bella’s blazer, then the bottom one; he only pulled away from her long enough for him to take the jacket off. 

Bella had no idea what might have happened to it as soon as Edward removed it from her person, and found that, at this particular moment, she didn’t really care. She was too busy trying to puzzle out what Edward was trying to do to her. As Edward’s fingers trailed up and down Bella’s now-bare arms, she racked her brain and tried to remember what she’d heard about Edward’s love-life. 

She vaguely recalled hearing about some girlfriend, named Tracey or Tina or something. She couldn’t remember. It was hot, and even though she hadn’t drunk any alcohol, her mind felt fuzzy. 

Edward’s slender fingers were plucking at her white blouse; they pulled it out from her skirt, and then his fingers were pressed up against the small of her back. What was going on? 

Before Bella could decide if she should push him away or tell him to stop, his wandering hands stilled over her too-flushed skin and then he pulled away completely. She turned around to see what the problem was, only to find him walking away from her all together.

Determined no to let him vanish on her yet again, but also because she wanted to yell at him to either continue or to give her an explanation, Bella followed him through the crowds. She thought that she’d lost him twice, but managed to spot him several feet away from where she’d last seen him.

After a moment, she emerged on the other side of the dance floor, feeling exceptionally wrung-out and disgusted. She spotted Edward with one hand braced casually on the wall beside the head of a tall, leggy blonde wearing too much non-waterproof make up and too little clothing.

So this was his game, huh? Bella thought with some irritation. I won’t put out within five seconds, so he moves on to somebody more willing? 

Except that there wasn’t anything funny going on. Edward continued to stand casually leaning against the wall and while the woman’s body movements indicated that she was clearly flirting with the celebrity, the fact that they were still talking after about five minutes spoke volumes to Bella. 

She wanted to get closer to hear what they were saying, but in this club, that would mean for her to literally stand right next to either of them. So that was clearly out. She should have brought a bug. The sound wouldn’t have been all that great, but it would be better than to stand and watch from a distance. 

After a moment, Edward moved in closer to the girl to box her in against the wall. Bella scoffed and rolled her eyes, but didn’t look away, not even when Edward picked the girl up and she wrapped her long legs around Edward’s waist. How completely tacky could they possibly get— at least most couples were content to fuck in a dark corner, in the bathrooms, or in the back alley. 

Bella still could not look away, even when the woman pushed her hands into Edward’s jacket. But a second later, she straightened up, Edward pulled away. They shook hands, and went their separate ways. How very peculiar; what was that about? Bella mused as she side-stepped to avoid being spotted by Edward right away.

What had the woman given him? Drugs? Information? A promise to hook up at some later, more convenient and less public time? If Bella could figure that out, then maybe she might begin to piece together who might want the celebrity dead.

A moment later, Edward tugged on her arm to get her attention. He hadn’t left her sight at all, but she only made it seem like they’d become separated in the crowd. “Let’s get out of here,” he yelled into her ear. Bella nodded in agreement, and let Edward drag her back to the staircase and up to the street. Jasper was somehow ahead of them, even though Bella hadn’t seen him leave the club. Exactly what was the point of a body guard if they were just going to leave their client alone in some shady rave?

“Edward! Oh my gosh, it’s Edward Cullen!” girls started screaming as they walked back along where the line formed. 

“Hey, how you guys doing tonight?” Edward said to them as he passed. “Completely lame party, but hope you guys have fun inside.” Jasper ushered them back inside the limo; it was running, and Bella wondered if the driver had even turned it off or even went to find someplace to park. “So sorry about that,” Edward said as they pulled away from the curb. “Like I said, gotta make contacts to get into better parties. I’ll let you know next time before there’s a party so that you can come prepared.”

 

* * *

The next morning, before Bella went to meet Edward at the Museum of Modern Art, she took a taxi out to where the party had been. In the light of day, the building looked even more run down and sad; some things were better left in the shadows. She walked inside the building without any problem, and went downstairs. Like the building itself, the room, now brightly lit and devoid of life, was just sad. Used condoms and empty cups littered the floor, and the man who had to sweep them all up paused when Bella came in. 

“Looking for something, sweetheart?” he asked her.

“A tan suit blazer,” Bella said. 

“Yeah, I’ve got it, but if you want my advice, it’s better that you just forget about it,” the man said. He propped the broom against a table and lead Bella over to a storage room that was by the bar. The jacket was in a rather sorry shape; Bella had no desire to closely inspect the stains on it because she knew exactly what some of them were and didn’t want to think about that at all. 

“I’m not a cop or anything, but I’m just wondering what exactly sort of… services that the clientele at this establishment might offer,” Bella said as she accepted the jacket. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said as he closed the door. With an annoyed huff, Bella palmed the man a twenty. “Literally anything that your little heart desires, sweetheart. Want me to hook you up? Is it sex that you’re after? Coke? Heroin? Special K?”

Bella quickly shook her head. “No, no, I was just… Never mind. Thank you very much.” She turned and left the club, her mind in turmoil. She was no closer to figuring out what had happened last night between Edward and that girl. They had exchanged something, and it sure as hell wasn’t just an invite to “better parties”, as Edward had promised. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of an aside: I only saw Black Swan once when it came out, so maybe I might have forgotten some small detail. But my point on the issue still stands.

Bella took a seat opposite of Edward and gingerly picked up the plastic-coated menu that the waitress had dropped on the table for her— it was exceptionally sticky, and Bella wished that she didn’t have to touch it. “I really liked that,” Edward said from behind his own menu. “I think that I would like to do more things like that.”

“Museum tours?” Bella asked as she looked at Edward over the top of the menu. 

“Yes, and if you can, I’d like to go see a symphony orchestra, or a ballet, or maybe some opera.”

“I’ll see what I can find for you,” Bella said. “I’m sure that all three will be doable.” 

“Great, great,” Edward said. He flashed Bella a bright, crooked smile over the top of his menu. “Now, if only you could make this menu be less sticky, then that would be really amazing.”

“I can get you tickets to Swan Lake; I’m not a miracle worker,” Bella said sourly. Edward laughed. 

 

* * *

After lunch, Bella followed Edward around as he helped to contribute to the foot traffic on the sweltering, New York sidewalks. He had a Yankees cap pulled on over his copper hair and dark sunglasses on, but he was still frequently stopped by fans. After waving goodbye to another fan, Edward stopped short in front of a record shop tucked between a Starbucks and a pharmacy. “Wow. You know, I knew that there were all of these older places in New York, but I didn’t exactly expect to see them.”

“What, like they don’t have record shops in London?” Bella asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh yes, there are, but it’s not the same as going into an old record shop in New York.” He moved his head back and forth slightly for a moment. “Well, sort of, but the music atmosphere in New York is a lot different than in London.” He pushed open the door, and Bella followed him in.

“Hi, welcome,” said a worker who was putting records into boxes. “Can I help you find anything?”

“Classical?” Edward asked her. 

“Over there,” the lady said and pointed to the far wall. 

“Ah yes, under the posters of the classical musicians,” Edward said and he went over there. Bella stood awkwardly near the door with Jasper and watched as Edward thumbed through the classical music records for a moment. Then, she moved off towards the section labeled with a sign that said Rock.

Pretty much nothing but the big-name stuff that the yuppie hipsters would buy. Bella was honestly a little disappointed with that. “Find what you’re looking for?” Edward asked from behind Bella; she jumped a little because she hadn’t heard him approach. She frowned as she turned to face him. She hadn’t been that interested in finding some records, had she?

“Not really,” Bella said as she shoved the stack back into place. 

“Never really took you for the classic rock kind of girl,” Edward went on.

“I’m not, not really,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I listen to Bowie, and that’s pretty much it. But they don’t appear to have any.”

“Yeah, not exactly an impressive selection here,” Edward said. “Shall we go?” Bella nodded in agreement, and they quickly left the shop. Once they were outside, Edward looked over to Bella. “So then, Bella. What sort of store do you frequent?”

The first thing that came to mind was the weapons “shop” where Bella would get new stilettos and an occasional box of ammo every couple of months. But that was not something that she was ever going to tell Edward about. The second was the grocery store. While that seemed much more pleasant to tell somebody about, she doubted that Edward wanted to hear that.

Instead, she tried to think about what Edward might actually like, and try to supply him with suitable places. Her mind first went to parties, but then she dismissed it as soon as she thought of it because she didn’t know of any sort of “rave store”. Then, her mind wandered back to the interview, and she had an idea.

“There is this one book store that I like a lot,” Bella said slowly. “It’s on the other side of town, though. Let’s take a cab.” She waited for his agreement before she stepped to the curb and hailed a taxi. Within minutes, Bella found herself pressed between the left side door and Edward’s side. She told the driver where they wanted to go, and then she pulled out her phone to pretend to be busy. 

“I’m sorry; I’m probably taking up all of your time right now,” Edward said when he noticed that she was flipping through her phone.

“It’s my job to make you happy,” Bella said absently. 

“But surely you must have other clients right now?”

“Not at the moment, no,” Bella said as she looked over to Edward. He flashed her another smile; she frowned and looked back at the old messages from Rose. “You were put on high priority. My boss wanted to make sure that all of your New York tourist needs were met.”

“Well, you are being a splendid guide, if I do say so myself,” Edward said. Bella was about to reply when a new message from her liaison with Victoria came in.

“Good news, babe: I got some pretty sweet tickets to Swan Lake,” the message said.

“Good news, Edward: Tickets to Swan Lake,” Bella said to the man who sat next to her.

“Amazing,” Edward said with a bright smile. 

“Great, two hours of men in tights with cod-pieces,” Jasper said.

“Grow up,” Edward said to his bodyguard. “I heard you singing along to every stupid song in Lion King.”

“Yes, but Lion King is a classic.”

“And Swan Lake predates the birth of Walt Disney, so maybe some culture will be good for you.”

Bella just sat and watched the exchange between the two men in silence. It was honestly a lot like her own relationship with Rose: one who went kicking and screaming into culture, and the other who dragged them there.

“But maybe it won’t be so bad if there’s some hot girl-on-girl action,” Jasper went on. Bella dropped her facade of not paying attention to give Jasper a scything look around Edward.”

“That was a very loose and very crappy adaptation of the ballet, Jazz,” Edward said. “And, quite frankly, I’m certain that it only got the notoriety that it did based solely upon those scenes. Don’t you agree, Bella?”

“What? Don’t drag me into this; I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Bella said quickly. 

“Black Swan?” Edward said. Bella continue to give him a blank look. “The movie tries to convince us that it’s some ‘modern’ and ‘new’ adaptation where they get the lady to play both Odette and Odile at the same time.”

“Um, did they even watch the original play?” Bella asked with some confusion. She typed “Watch Black Swan” into her phone and sent it as a text to Rose without meaning to. 

“I know right? But the story follows the ballerina who was cast to play the lead role, she slowly descends into madness,” Edward said with a roll of his eyes. “And there’s some weird masturbation scenes as well as the aforementioned girl-on-girl scenes. Of course, I believe that they only included it just to pander to those who get off on soft-core lesbian porn.”

Bella’s phone flashed with a new message. “Please tell me that that is your work telling you that you got me orchestra tickets?” Edward said with some annoyance. 

Bella checked; it was from Rosalie, in response to the message that Bella had accidentally sent her, “Sorry, but I saw it when it came out. It was okay.”

“No, it’s just my friend,” Bella explained as she put her phone into her bag just as the cab pulled up in front of the four-story book store. 

“Is that what I think it is?” Edward asked as the driver said the amount that they owed him. 

“If you think that it’s a four-story book store, then yes,” Bella agreed as she pulled out her wallet. 

“No no, I got this,” Edward said, and handed the driver a hundred dollar bill. “Keep the change.” 

“Thank you very much,” the man said; it was a massive tip for the man. Bella slid out, and waited as Edward and Jasper got out.

“I thought that this might be of interest to you,” Bella said with a slight smirk as they walked inside. 

“No, this is really amazing; thank you,” Edward said. “I think that we’re finally starting to understand one another, and hopefully, this will be able to help you make some more recommendations for things to do while I’m here.”

“Of course; I’m here to help you,” Bella replied quickly. Her smile felt too strained, but Edward wasn’t paying attention. 

“Shall we meet back here in an hour, then?” Edward said almost absently as he looked around the first floor. 

“Yes, of course,” Bella agreed. She didn’t really have anything to buy except to maybe look into that “Black Swan” movie, but she knew that if she followed Edward around at a distance, Jasper would notice and start to question her. And that was the last thing that she wanted. She stalked off towards the movie section while Edward and Jasper disappeared into the Shakespeare section.

 

* * *

After Bella had purchased a copy of Black Swan, she stuffed the DVD into her bag and went to find out where Edward and Jasper had gone off to. She checked the Shakespeare section, but they had left the area in the ten-plus minutes that Bella had spent in the movie area. 

She wandered up and down the various isles in a rather listless manor. She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t looking for Edward, not really. But if she just happened to run into him again…

She’d just walked up to the third floor when her phone rang; it was Edward. “Hey, where are you?” he asked.

“I’m on the front stair on the third floor,” she replied.

“Wait, I see you; look up!” Edward exclaimed. Bella looked up at the overhanging balcony for the fourth floor and saw Edward and Jasper waving at her. She waved back and went to go join them. 

“What’s up?” she asked him.

“He waved his phone in front of her. “Got an invite to another party that sounds really neat. Please come with me again?” Edward said; he had a rather hopeful look in his eyes. Bella knew that she was going to accept, regardless of how she felt about going to another rave. But she also knew what her job was, not to mention the fact that she was curious to find out what the leggy blonde had given Ed last night. Was it drugs? She knew that he was a party boy, but in the four-some years that he’d been in the public spotlight, not once had the name of Edward Cullen ever come up in conjunction with illegal drugs. Not even a drunk driving charge, either. 

The man was frequently spotted going into, at, and leaving clubs. But there was no supporting evidence of drinking, now that Bella thought of it. The guy might be seen with woman after woman, night after night, but he had never once been photographed with a beverage of any sort in his hand. Not even an unidentifiable cup. 

Sure, she’d seen him with a cup the night before, but it had disappeared in much the same manor that hers had, and she hadn’t actually seen him drink from it, either. 

“Come on, please?” Edward pressed. She’d hesitated too long.

“Fine, but don’t leave me again like you did last night,” Bella insisted. 

“I promise. It’s super casual, so just jeans and a t-shirt. Closed-toed shoes are recommended,” Edward explained. Bella just gave a slight bob of her head in understanding. “Was there something else that you wanted to show me today? Because I’d like to head back to the hotel now.”

“It’s not like you’re going to be here for an entire month or anything,” Bella said with a roll of her eyes. Edward gave a short laugh of agreement.

“I’ll see you at nine, then.” 

Bella walked with them outside, put them into a cab, and then got into one herself, where she told the driver to take her to The Towers. When she got to the luxury hotel, she went inside and walked up to the front desk.

“I’m Mr. Cullen’s tour guide of the city, and I have something to deliver to him,” she said to the lady who was working at the desk. “Will you call up to his room to make sure that he’s in right now?”

“Yes, of course,” the lady agreed quickly as she picked up the phone. “Mr. Cullen? Yes, there’s a… wait, where did she go?”

Bella, having already confirmed that Edward and Jasper had indeed gone back to their hotel like they’d said they would, had gone back outside. She went across the street and ducked into an alley where she shucked both her cream blazer and navy blouse, which left her in a lacy, teal camisole. She then pulled a pair of jeans out from her bag, pulled them on under her skirt, which she proceeded to remove as soon as her jeans were on. She stuffed her suit into her bag before she exchanged her low navy pumps for some Converses. 

Finished with her quick make-over, Bella left the alley for the cafe that was across the street from the hotel. She ordered a cup of coffee, bought a newspaper, and sat down in a seat by the large picture window; she shook out the paper and settled in to wait. 

Stake-outs were a completely tedious part of being an assassin, but they sometimes had their upsides. Bella loathed having them more than anything, but she also knew that she’d gotten some exceptionally valuable information because of her patience. But, more often than not, she ended up wasting her time.

Today, Bella was in luck. Edward, with the same cap and glasses that he’d been wearing earlier, came out from the hotel with Jasper about an hour later. He hailed a cab, they got in, and the cab took off. 

Bella had already memorized the cab number, so she pulled out her phone and dialed the New York Taxi Commission. “Yes, hi, I was in a a cab earlier and I left my wallet in it. I’m so stupid,” Bella said after she managed to get through to a real person. 

“No worries, sweetie,” the woman on the other end said. “It happens all the time. Do you remember the cab number?” Bella slowly repeated the number; less questions would be asked if she rattled it off like she went around and memorized the numbers of the cabs she rode in. “It… looks like that cab is currently in transit right now,” the lady said after a brief pause. 

“Just tell me when it stops somewhere, and I can go and get my wallet,” Bella said.

“I can tell the driver to wait until you get there?”

“Um, yes, okay,” Bella said. She waited about ten minutes on hold while the cab got to the final destination, and then the lady came back on the line and rattled off an address. That was all that she needed, so she hung up, went outside, and hailed a cab of her own. 

The neighborhood that Edward had gone to was the same sort of seedy place as the rave had been the night before. Was he were for a party? But it was barely 5 PM; no decent party like that would ever start that early. 

After she located the building, Bella pulled her hair into a baseball cap and went inside. It was a complete repeat of that morning: the club, after hours, only somebody had cleaned up all of the used condoms in preparation for people to drop more of them onto the floor tonight. 

“Hey, we’re closed,” a male voice said from an office behind the bar. 

“I’m just looking for some information,” Bella said as she walked behind the bar in order to get into the office. The man came out, and holy cow, was he huge. Bella was quick to pull a hundred out from her pocket and handed it to the guy. “Edward Cullen.”

“Yeah, he came in here,” the man said as he stuffed the money into his back pocket. He said that he was looking for something, but he didn’t tell me what, though. Paid me $500 just to look around the club. I watched from my office, because I don’t trust nobody who does things like that. He looked under maybe half of the tables before he pulled something off from under one of them, and then he and his body guard left.”

“Which table, do you know?”

“It was over in the corner,” the man said as he pointed to the far corner. 

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Bella asked. The man made a “come hither” motion with all of his fingers, palm up. Bella slapped another hundred into his hand.

“Help yourself.” 

Bella huffed with annoyance as she walked over to the tables. What in the world was Mr. Cullen involved in that had him removing gum from the bottom of tables in night clubs after hours? 

After Bella looked under the fifth table, that’s when she saw it. The faint remains of tape stuck under the table. Edward had come here to get something, but what? Why all of the secrecy? She ran her fingers over the remains of the tape, and tried to puzzle out what might have been there, but it was hard to say. Something small, judging by the indentations left over from the tape, and something that would have been rather flat, or else somebody else would have spotted it. 

A baggie of drugs wouldn’t be all that big, especially not if it was something small but in a high dosage. But again, why all of the secrecy? Why not just do the hand-off in some bathroom stall like everybody else did? Was it because he was considered a high-profile celebrity? But if somebody with a camera phone spotted Edward leaving the club at 5 in the afternoon, it would look even more suspicious if they saw him leaving the ladies bathroom at some club. 

Now even more confused than before, Bella left the club and started to walk back to where she could hail a taxi. What in the world was Edward Cullen up to? 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a bit of a heads up, this chapter has some very brief mentions of a past sexual assault.
> 
> Also, I apologize for the change of title. I was never quite happy with the other one, and I'm more satisfied with what it is now.
> 
> I just wanted to thank everybody for reading this. If you're enjoying it, please don't be afraid to leave a comment or kudos.

Bella went home and threw on a Diamond Dogs t-shirt before she popped a frozen dinner into the microwave. She knew that it was pointless to keep going back to what might have been taped under the table, but she mulled it over yet again as she watched the numbers count down to zero. After the microwave went off, she pulled it out and set it on the counter to cool while she went to get the DVD she’d bought earlier from her bag. She sliced the plastic open with a letter opener and put the disk into the tray on the DVD player. 

Once she’d finished watching the movie, she instantly decided that the movie was overly pretentious and mostly done for shock value. This was what Edward would want for her to think about it, after all. If her job had been to get close to Jasper, she would have thought that it was a charming film and would have commented about how hot the scenes with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis had been. 

Her phone blinked with a new message, and she saw that it was Edward. “You are still coming to the party, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Bella quickly replied. “I’m on my way.” She dumped the suit that she’d been wearing earlier out onto her bed, and stuffed another t-shirt and a light jacket into the bag, along with the hat that she’d worn earlier. Then, she went to catch a taxi to The Towers. 

Edward and Jasper were waiting for her in the lobby of the hotel. “Sorry sorry I’m late, I got caught up with something,” Bella said as she came over to them.

“No worries,” Edward said as he stood. “It’s always better to be fashionably late, anyway.” His eyes raked over what Bella was wearing. “Never took you for a Ziggy fan.”

Bella gave an absent shrug. “I listen to him sometimes,” she said. “Shall we go, then?” Edward agreed, and lead the three of them outside, where he hailed another cab and gave the driver an address. It wasn’t anywhere near where Edward had been to that afternoon, nor the party the night before. 

She was a little surprised to see that the neighborhood, although rather deserted looking, looked well-kept. If gang members came and tagged the buildings, somebody at least came by and covered it up with paint. In the daylight, the area probably wouldn’t look quite as nice, but it was hard to say in the dim, blue street light. 

They didn’t hear the music until Edward opened a door into the building, and then, it was only the low bass, the kind that was more felt in the chest rather than was actually heard. Edward lead Bella down a set of winding stairs, and then knocked on a door at the bottom. A second later, the door was opened, and a burly man bid them enter. 

“So pleased to have Edward Cullen grace our party with his presence,” the man said. 

“Thank you, I’m happy to be here,” Edward said. “This is Bella Swan; make sure that she gets anything that she wants.”

“Yes, of course,” the man said. Bella saw the bouncer speaking into a walkie-talkie as the three of them walked away. Now that they were inside where the party was, the music was much clearer. They had come out onto an overhanging balcony that looked over what Bella could only describe as a pit. Dark figures writhed in a way that could only be described as part dancing, part sex. Multi-colored lights flashed over them from above while dark fog curled up around them from below. 

“This is better?” Bella asked, and then pondered the volume of the music. If she had to yell this loudly just for Edward to hear her, she didn’t want to go down to the dance floor.

“Much,” Edward was quick to agree. She didn’t like how close that he was standing— needed to stand. His breath was hot against the side of her neck, and she felt chills of revulsion creep down her spine. “Do you want something to drink?” Bella wanted to leave. But what she wanted seemed irrelevant at any moment in her life; forget about now. 

She nodded in agreement, and Edward made a motion to somebody. Bella craned her neck around to see, but a moment later, a lady wearing a corset came forward from the crowd and handed them each a plastic cup. Bella sniffed at the one that she’d been given— although she could smell the alcohol in it, she could not identify what it was. It was likely some sort of cocktail of alcohol and street drugs. Bella pretended to take a drink and put the cup down at the first chance that she got. 

“Do you want to dance?” Edward was much closer to her now, his lips practically brushing against Bella’s earlobe. It took every ounce of her training not to jerk away from him with revulsion. She did not want to dance. She did not want to be pressed up against Edward and a dozen strangers in what was basically a giant orgy pit. 

What she wanted was irrelevant. Edward didn’t even wait for her to agree this time, and just dragged her down the steps and into the fray. People parted as Edward dragged her closer to the far wall, away from where the DJ was set up. The music wasn’t any louder back here, but the smell… oh the smell was completely revolting. Of piss, shit, vomit, and the thousand different scents of unwashed bodies pressed packed together in a too-tight space.

Edward put his hands on Bella’s hips and started to help her move her body in tempo to the throbbing beat that filled her very body. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be swaying her body like some cheap lap-dancer. And she sure as hell didn’t want for Edward Cullen’s hands to be controlling the movements of her hips like she didn’t know how otherwise. 

Then, he spun her around until she was facing the platform where the DJ was and he was behind her. They were so very close together that she could feel his semi-soft erection press against her bottom. His hands moved up her legs, up her torso, and then started to go back down again. When he reached the bottom of her shirt, his hands moved up, inside the fabric, inside her camisole, against her bare skin. 

Cold fingers (Edward’s were hot). Fat, thick, clumsy fingers (Edward’s were slender and agile). 

Bella tried to pull away from him, from the unwanted touch, but no matter how hard she tried, she felt as if she could literally not move. Panic rose like bile inside of her. 

Higher and higher his hands traveled until they brushed against the lace of her bra. She thought that she saw a nasty smile on his face, but her back was to him and she couldn’t have seen anything. She finally found the strength to pull away. She spun around and punched Edward in the jaw.

Bella had the arm strength to break a man’s jaw if she really put the energy into a punch. But at that moment, Bella had been brought back to when she was 11, and she had only put the energy that her eleven-year-old self possessed. 

The two of them stood there awkwardly, while people stood still around them. Bella saw Edward mouth her name, but then she turned and fled. 

She pushed through the crowd, which easily parted for her, and made her way towards the other end of the floor, where a gleaming exit sign stood out amongst the darkness. Once she was out on the street, she hurried along until she saw a cab, and then got into it.

Bella sat silently and stared blankly out the front window until the taxi pulled up in front of her apartment building. Her real apartment, not the pretentious building that Victoria had placed her at for the job. She hastily handed some bills over to the driver, not paying attention at all if they were the right amount, and hurried inside. 

Her hand shook so badly that she could not put the key into the lock. The door opened and Rosalie stood there, wearing her bathrobe, with a cigarette hanging limply between her lips. 

Upon seeing the familiar, comforting, and safe sight of her oldest friend, Bella finally broke down. She collapsed against Rosalie, who held her with some confusion. Emmett, Rosalie’s boyfriend, came out from the kitchen and looked at the scene. Rosalie gave him a helpless look over Bella’s head; she was not good with emotional things like crying assassins. 

“Come on, let’s get you inside,” Emmett said as he took control of the situation. Emotions weren’t something that he dealt well with, either, but he knew that somebody had to do something, and Rose sure as hell wasn’t going to start it. He steered the girls over to the warn sofa and then went back to close and lock the door. 

“What happened?” Rose asked once they were seated. Bella had practically crawled up onto Rosalie’s lap.

“Mike,” Bella gasped out between sobs.

“Shh, it’s okay, honey,” Rosalie whispered as she gently rubbed Bella’s back. “You killed him, and he can’t hurt you anymore.” After a few minutes, Bella had calmed down and stopped crying, although her body still shook occasionally with sob-hiccups. “Now then, do you want to tell me what this is all about?”

“Edward.”

“Of course it is,” Rosalie deadpanned. “Sweetie, look at me.” She put her index and middle finger under Bella’s chin and gently tipped Bella’s head up so that the other girl would look at her. “Just because you have the assignment of seducing Edward before you kill him does not give him the right to touch you without your permission. Ever. Your body is the best weapon that you’ve got, so you’ve got to make sure that nobody mishandles it. Alright?”

“Right…” Bella agreed. She rubbed at her eye with the back of her wrist. 

“I know that we both went to different levels of training after our Red Initiation, but we still somehow managed to find one another after all that time,” Rosalie went on. “We’re still those girls who were put into a room together when we were 12, but at the same time, we’re so much more than that now. You are more than a little girl who was sexually molested by her uncle, and you’re much more than a woman who freaks out by being groped by a wanna-be celebrity at some party or whatever happened.”

“That’s exactly what happened,” Bella said as she pulled away from Rose and accepted the tissue that Emmett handed her. She blew her nose. “He put his hands up my shirt at a rave.”

“Ooh, that’s not good,” Rose said. 

“What?”

“I’m sure that there were lots of people around,” Rose said; she looked exceptionally grim. Bella paled and then put her head in her hands.

“Everybody was looking at us when I punched Edward,” she moaned.

“I’m sorry… did you just say that you punched Edward Cullen?” Rosalie asked; she was unable to hide her laughter.

“Don’t laugh! He put his hands up my shirt, I punched him in the face, and everybody was watching us,” Bella said. She angrily punched Rosalie on the shoulder, but didn’t put any energy behind the movement. “Victoria is going to be so angry. I’m sure that at least a dozen people had their phones out, but I wasn’t paying attention at the time.”

“It’ll be okay so long as you make up with Edward,” Rosalie reassured the girl.

“I don’t want to call him; he’s the one who groped me!” Bella protested. Rosalie gave her an annoyed look. “Besides, he’s probably still at the party; he might not even hear his phone.”

“Fine,” Rose said as she stood up. “Are you going back to your new digs or will you stay the night?”

“I’ll stay.”

“But sleep in your own room, because I don’t want Victoria to get mad at me, too,” Rosalie huffed. Bella looked over to Emmett. 

“Not like I’d want to sleep beside that,” Bella said with a sneer. She stood as well and went into her room. 

 

* * *

Bella jerked awake when somebody roughly slammed her bedroom door open. She and Rosalie had a chain and three deadbolts on the door, but they hadn’t apparently stopped whoever this was from coming into the apartment. Bella slipped her hand under her pillow for the gun she kept under there.

“You fuckwit!” Victoria spat at Bella. Bella didn’t move; Victoria threw a file folder down onto the bed and a bunch of glossy but low-resolution photos slid out and spilled onto the floor. 

“Victoria, I’m really sorry, I-” Bella started as she flung back the blankets on the bed.

“You had one fucking job to do, and you couldn’t even fucking do that! I took you under my wing! I gave you so much when I wasn’t even certain that I was going to see returns on you! You were some scrawny-ass, beaten and neglected orphan when I found you! Do you know what you were doing when I found you?” Bella mumbled something under her breath. “What’s that? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you, darling?”

“I was eating out of trash cans,” Bella said, her voice loud and clear. She stood on the other side of the bed and looked down at her toes. 

“Damn right you fucking were. You were literal trash. And I raised you from the personal perdition that you’d put yourself into,” Victoria went on. Bella flinched a little but otherwise didn’t move. “And if you think that I’m just going to sit by and watch you screw this job to hell just because some guy fucking touched you and you got some bad feelings, you’re talking to the wrong person.” She spat the last two words in Bella’s face. Bella bit down hard on her lip to stop herself from showing emotion. 

Victoria grabbed a handful of the photos that had spilled out across Bella’s bed and onto the floor, and shoved them into Bella’s face. “You are going to fucking fix this, and if you can’t, then I’m going to… You know what? No. You’re too good for me to slit your throat. I’m going to turn you into the police and have them sort through all of your crimes. And I’ll fucking plant some evidence for a dozen other crimes that you had nothing to do with, just for the hell of it.”

“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” Bella said robotically. “I will fix this; I will make Edward Cullen trust me.”

Victoria smacked Bella in the face with the photos; Bella did not move or even blink. “Don’t just make the asswipe trust you; Make. Him. Love. You.” Each word was emphasized with another smack of the photos. Victoria tossed the photos back towards the bed, spun around, and left the apartment. When the front door slammed shut, Bella flinched, and then collapsed onto the bed. 

She absently picked up the first photo that her finger brushed against and looked as it. A rather blurry still of her, mid-punch to Edward’s face. This was not good. 

Bella tossed the photo aside and ran out from her room. “Bella…” Rosalie said as she came out from her own bedroom.

“I’m sorry about that; I will pay for the new chain,” Bella said. “But I have to go now!” She didn’t even care that she was bare foot and in a ratty t-shirt and soft shorts. She ran down to the street and hailed a cab. But as she slid into the back seat, she paused a moment to reconsider her options. Instead of telling the driver to take her to The Towers to beg for Edward’s forgiveness, she instead told the driver the address of her new apartment. 

“Miss Swan, there was a delivery for you a little while ago,” the doorman at the apartment said when Bella got out from the cab. Bella huffed with annoyance— it was likely something left by Victoria or one of her gofers; more pictures to threaten her into cooperation. But she followed the doorman inside and over to the front desk, where the man proceeded to pull out the largest bouquet of purple hyacinths that Bella had ever seen in her life. “You know, in the language of flowers, purple hyacinths are for apologizing. I don’t know you all that well, but whatever he did, it must have been bad.”

Bella inhaled sharply through her nose, and exhaled roughly through her mouth before she said, “We both really messed everything up yesterday.” She accepted the flowers and took them upstairs to her apartment. 

Once there, she put the over-the-top arrangement on the kitchen island, and just stood and looked at them. Completely, one-hundred and ten percent over-the-top. She went into the kitchen to find something to eat, when she spotted a card on the other side. She pulled it out. 

“I don’t think that I can properly express how sorry that I am for the events that transpired last night,” the card read. “If you can find it within yourself to forgive me, then I hope that we can still be friends. Or at least work together for the duration of my stay in New York.” It was signed simply, E.

Bella put the card back in the bouquet and went over to the sofa, where she’d dropped her bag, and pulled out her phone. “Edward? Hi, it’s Bella Swan.”

“I was hoping that you’d call. I’m completely sorry about last night; I was completely out of line, and you should have hurt me a lot more,” Edward said quickly. 

“Speak of it no more,” Bella said quickly with a laugh that sounded overly forced and false in her ears. 

“Did you get the flowers?”

“Yes.”

“I was hoping to get a chance to speak with you, but the doorman said that you never came home. I tried to call-”

“I had my phone off.”

“I know,” Edward said. He gave a frustrated huff. “I was worried about you.”

“I’m a big girl; I can take care of myself.”

“I know, but you just stormed out from the club, and it wasn’t a very safe neighborhood and then you weren’t answering your phone… Is it so wrong that I assumed the worst?”

“Probably not, no, but thank you for worrying about me,” Bella said with a roll of her eyes. “I stayed the night at a friend’s house.”

“Oh, I see.” Silence. “I still feel real bad about the entire thing, though. Please, allow me to take you out to dinner tonight. Before Swan Lake.”

Bella mulled it over. If she didn’t have direct orders to seduce Edward, she would have packed her bags and gotten the farthest away from New York and Edward Cullen as she possibly could. “Alright. But since we’ll be in our nice ballet clothes, we’ll have to do something super fancy. I’ll make a reservation.”

“Great. I’ll get Jasper to get us a limo again for tonight.”

“Can’t wait,” Bella said, and then she hung up. She needed a drink; 7 AM wasn’t too early for an entire bottle of wine, was it?


	6. Chapter 6

Bella stood absently in the lobby of The Towers as she waited for Edward and Jasper to come downstairs. She could have easily gone up to his hotel suite, but she didn’t want to hike all the way up there only to come back down after a few minutes. The elevator gave a slight ding as the digital display went from 2 to L, and then the doors slid open. 

Edward stepped out first, dressed in an all black tuxedo. His eyes immediately focused on Bella, who put her phone behind her back. Almost against her will, her face flushed with embarrassment. She’d picked a black, sequined dress that was rather modest in the front, but it was open in the back. She’d wanted to seduce Edward, but didn’t want to be overly forward. She regretted her decision now. 

Rosalie would have been able to pull the look off completely, but Bella felt awkward in the dress. She was used to jeans and boots; not evening gowns and high heels. 

Edward quickly crossed the lobby and went over to Bella. “You look so beautiful,” he said, his eyes unable to leave her face. Bella flushed even more, and was incapable of saying anything.

“Thank you,” she somehow managed to squeak out. There was an awkward moment when Edward and Bella just looked at one another. 

“Edward, the limo is waiting out front,” Jasper said from behind Edward, and broke the spell. Bella had never been more grateful of the bodyguard than in that moment.  His hand almost touched her bare back while he led her out of the hotel. He didn’t want to make the same mistake of touching her bare skin without Bella’s permission again.

Again, the two of them were awash in awkward silence. “Jasper wouldn’t tell me where we’re going,” Edward said after a moment.

“It’s a very upscale restaurant close to here,” Bella explained. “I’m not quite sure if you’ll like it, but I was told that it is very hard to get into. Of course, when I said that Edward Cullen wished to eat there, then suddenly, everybody was bending over backwards to make it happen.” Edward gave a slight chuckle. 

“It is one of the nicer perks of being famous,” Edward said. More silence. Bella had never been in a situation quite as awkward as this before. 

…Well, with the exception of when she was in training and had an incident that involved one of her fellow assassins-in-training, Jessica, a balloon, and a bucket of paint, but that was beside the point.

“Did I tell you that you look stunning?” Edward asked. “Because you do. Breath-taking.”

“Yes,” Bella agreed quickly. The limousine pulled up in front of the restaurant, and Bella was glad that she’d picked a place that was close to the hotel; she wasn’t sure that she could stand another moment of the awkwardness that was between her and Edward. Edward slid out from the car first, and then turned around to help Bella out. They were shown inside the restaurant, and immediately were seated at a booth in the back. 

“Would Mr. Cullen like to make a wine selection, or would you like a moment to look over the menu first?” a waiter asked.

“I’ve never really been much of a wine drinker,” Edward said. “How about you?” Bella shook her head. “I think that we’re fine, thank you. I would like a water and a coke, though.”

“Me, too,” Bella agreed. The waiter went off to get their drinks, and they turned their attention to the menus in front of them. 

“Probably for the best that I took Italian in high school,” Edward said under his breath. 

“Anch'io (1),” Bella muttered under her breath. Edward put down his menu and stared at Bella until she looked at him over the top of her own menu. “What? It’s not like you’re the only person in the world to have learned how to speak Italian.”

The waiter came back with their drinks just then, and they ordered. Without the barrier of the menu, Bella felt exposed. “You are more educated than I thought.”

“Do you just think that all Americans sit and watch Jersey Shore all day long?” Bella asked with a sneer. “I know that this might come as a bit of a shock to your English system, but some of us are older than reality TV, and some of us have better things to do than to sit around and watch crap all day long. Some of us actually value an education.”

“No, I’m not surprised at all that you are highly educated,” Edward said quickly. “It’s just that you’re in a job where you follow celebrities around all day long. If you have as much education as I think that you do, you should be having other people take care of you; not the other way around.”

“Thanks, I suppose, but there’s a lot more to me than you’d probably imagine. There’s a reason why I am where I am right now, and it’s not because of a lack of education,” Bella quickly said.

Edward chuckled again. “Yes, it makes sense that you’d only want to do this, and not because you didn’t have any other choice.”

“Um… Yes. Something like that,” Bella said hesitantly. She looked across the table to Edward, who offered her a hesitant smile. 

Were all first dates supposed to be this awkward, or was it hang-over from the incident last night? She didn’t have much experience with men outside of her work. She didn’t have a problem with men or the thought of sex; she just had better things to think about and to occupy her time with. She’d always been rather awkward around other people; not so much shy as lacking social graces. Rosalie was the complete opposite— open, flirty, and Victoria always said that she’d been born with a golden tongue. It made her perfect for the role of seductress. 

The seconds stretched on, and as the awkward silence between them continued on and on, Bella felt like she needed to say something, anything, just to put a stop to it. “I… um… I watched Black Swan yesterday,” she said.

“Oh?” Edward asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“Yeah. It was overly pretentious,” Bella said with a slight nod of her head.

“I thought that you might feel that way,” Edward said with a slight chuckle. More silence. Bella mentally chided herself that she really ought to have something, anything, to talk to him about. “So, what types of movies do you enjoy?”

“I like Groundhog Day.”

“The one with Bill Murray?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Bella agreed quickly. 

“Which only brings up the question: If you were trapped in one day for a really long time, what exactly would you do?” 

That was the question of the hour. Bella figured that most people would say that they’d kill somebody that they hated, but Bella did that all of the time. After some ten years of doing the same thing, the novelty had worn off more than a little bit. She wasn’t interested in eating so much that she puked, in doing drugs, or any sort of over-indulgence. She already knew how to play a musical instrument as well as professional musicians, and she had little interest in sex. 

“I honestly don’t know,” she said after a moment of hesitation. “What would you do?” She figured that Edward might not pester her about it if she turned the tables and asked him. Edward paused for about as long as Bella had.

“I don’t know, either. I already lead a pretty good life. And it’s not like I could waste my time in learning how to play the piano when I already know how, too.”

“Yeah, I though the same thing,” Bell agreed. “Except with clarinet.”

“Do you wish that you knew how to play another instrument?”

“No,” Bella said quickly. Edward cocked an eyebrow at her when she didn’t elaborate. “I spent years of my life learning how to play, and I’m not even sure what good that it did in the long run.”

“Playing a musical instrument increases test scores, improves mathematical talent, as well as boosts logical thinking skills,” Edward rattled off quickly.

“You don’t have to tell me that; I know the statistics,” Bella snapped at him. “It’s just that…” The waiter came back just then with their food. 

“So sorry for the wait; is there anything else that I can get for you?”

“No, this looks delicious; thank you,” Edward said. The two of the busied themselves in digging into their food, and Bella was grateful for the lull in the conversation. “So, what were you saying about your clarinet studies?”

“I don’t remember,” Bella said absently, although it was a lie. She remembered exactly what she was going to say. 

“I think that you were going to tell me about why you play the clarinet.”

“I don’t know why,” Bella reminded him, with some irritation. “Victoria, the lady who raised me since I was 12, she said that it was important to know how to play a musical instrument. She said that I looked like the kind of person who played the clarinet, and she gave me one, and then made me take lessons every day.”

“You weren’t raised by your parents?” Edward asked, and Bella inwardly cringed. She’d never told anybody about Victoria who didn’t already know about her. And she didn’t know why she’d slipped up and told Edward about Victoria now.

“Um, no.”

“What happened to them? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“They died.”

“I’m so sorry,” Edward said gently. Bella understood the pity in his voice, but it had been more than fifteen years ago that her parents died. Ever since Victoria had brought the young girl under her wing, Bella hadn’t really thought about her parents much. It was, after all, a part of the real Bella Swan who had had to die in order for the Bella Swan who was the assassin to be born. 

Bella pressed her lips together out of annoyance. Edward’s knife clinked against his plate. The ice in Bella’s glass of water settled. The hostess came near their private booth to show another couple to their table. 

“So… Um… Victoria, she’s like your aunt or something?” Edward asked after the hostess had left. 

“No,” Bella said, her eyes on the plate in front of her. “She just took me in. She’s a complete sucker for lost cause children.”

“You’re so bright— I can’t possibly imagine you ever being labeled as a ‘lost cause’.”

“This is all only because of Victoria,” Bella explained. “I wouldn’t be the person that I am today without her.” Understatement of the century. 

The lady at the other table burst out laughing, which startled both Edward and Bella. Edward glared over at the other couple, but both were too wrapped up in one another and didn’t notice. “Well, shall we change the subject then?” Edward said as he returned his attention to Bella.

“Yes, please,” Bella said quickly. “Um… what about your own parents?” Bella knew from the fringes of celebrity gossip that she was exposed to that at least Carlisle and Esme Cullen were very much alive and well.

“Well, my dad is a doctor,” Edward started rather hesitantly. 

“Right,” Bella agreed. She knew that much; Dr. Carlisle Cullen’s plastic surgery business was how the Cullens got their money. 

“I don’t know if you follow the media circus around my life, but they tend to paint my father in a very negative light. They say that he’s only a doctor who gives ladies plastic boobs and feeds into a mentally ill woman’s desire to make herself beautiful through means of plastic surgery. But that isn’t true. He travels all over the world and he helps children in need. Kids who are born deformed— they would have been killed by their people if it wasn’t for my father. The media tends to overlook all of that because they focus on an asymmetrical boob job or something stupid.”

“I don’t know why people are obsessed with other people’s bodies like that,” Bella said with a slight frown. “It sounds like your father is doing some really amazing work.”

“Oh, but he is,” Edward was quick to agree. “Aside from some societies that look upon deformed babies as demons and act accordingly– both towards the parents and the child. But some of these children, what sort of lives would they have if my father hadn’t come in to help them? Only one percent of the population in these back-water villages can afford to buy a car, so these children, born without legs or arms, what can they do? They are a burden on the family, and even if they are spared, their life is nothing but sitting around and waiting to die.”

There was an awkward lull in the conversation. Bella sipped at her water, and then cleared her throat. “Well then,” she said as she set the glass back down again. “This went from ‘mildly depressing’ to ‘very very fucking depressing’.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Edward said with a slight bob of his head. “Swan Lake.”

“Yes,” Bella said simply. 

“I try to get out to see things like operas and ballets at least once a year, but I must admit that all of my recent theatrical art attendances have been The Nutcracker every Christmas with Alice.”

“Well, now you can tell her that you saw Lion King. As per her request that you do so,” Bella said with a slight smile. Edward burst out laughing.

“Yes, yes I did. And I’m not quite sure what any of us expected— it was literally a live-action version of the movie.” The waiter came over to their table at that moment. 

“How is everything?” he asked. 

“Quite excellent, thank you,” Edward said, and Bella nodded in agreement, since she’d just taken a bite of her pasta.

“Would either of you be interested in dessert? Our tiramisu is quite famous, you know?”

“What do you say, Bella?” Edward asked her. Bella swallowed and looked at her phone to check the time.

“Some other time, I think,” Bella said. “We should have enough time to get settled at the theater.”

“Alright then, I’ll bring the check out,” he said, and left again. 

“I never have the heart to tell waiters that I’m always too full after the main course,” Edward said to Bella in a conspirative tone. She pressed her lips together in a vain attempt not to laugh.

“Me, too,” she agreed after a second. “But I’m certain that our dinner will be well-digested after Swan Lake. I know a great frozen yogurt place that’s not too far away from the theater.”

“Oh good, that sounds like a plan,” Edward said as the waiter came back with the bill. Edward paid quickly, and they went out to the limousine. It had been arranged, once again, that they would come in to the back entrance of the theater, and a man met them there.

“Mr. Cullen,” the man said as he shook Edward’s hand. “We’re ever so honored that you decided to come and watch the show tonight with us.”

“Yes,” Edward said. “I’m happy to be here. It has been entirely too long since I last saw Swan Lake.”

“I hope that tonight’s performance will live up to your expectations,” the man said as he lead them up to a private box. 

“I’m sure that it will, thank you,” Edward said as the man ushered them inside. 

“If you need anything at all, please, do not hesitate to ask,” the man said before he left. Edward gestured to one of the four seats in the box, and Bella took the one closest to the edge. Edward sat next to her, and was about to lean over to look below when Bella stilled him with a hand on his shoulder.

“If you’re looking for a repeat of Tuesday night, you may look. But might I remind you what happened?” Bella said sourly. 

“Yes, yes,” Edward said a bit bitterly as he settled back into his seat. Bella looked over her shoulder to see Jasper standing guard by the door just as the lights dimmed. 

 

* * *

“You know, I don’t understand why they call it frozen yogurt,” Edward complained around a mouthful of the frozen concoction. “I mean, it literally tastes just like ice cream; why don’t they just call it ice cream? Is it suddenly too pedestrian to call it ice cream now or something?”

“I don’t know,” Bella said with a slight giggle. “But it is all the rage right now. Frozen yogurt— or froyo as it’s called now— shops are popping up everywhere. Where there used to be shoe stores and floral shops: froyo shops with kitschy little chairs from the 60’s.” She rolled her eyes.

“It’s only just another fad,” Edward said. “Remember the Atkins diet? Or how about that South Beach diet?”

“I don’t follow diet trends,” Bella said rather absently as she looked out the window of the limousine.

“No, of course not; you’ve probably never worried about what you eat or work-out schedules in your life.”

“No, I mean, I work out all of the time, so it’s not like I worry about eating a lot of junk food,” Bella said. 

“Right,” Edward agreed absently. The limousine pulled up in front of the hotel, and the doorman hurried to open the door for Edward. “Would you like to come in? Maybe for some coffee?” Bella was certain that coffee was code for something— she did live with Rosalie, after all.

“No, it’s getting late and I should head home,” Bella said simply. 

“It’s not like we’ve got anything planned for tomorrow,” Edward protested with a slight frown.

“No, it’s not that…” Bella trailed off, unable to think of a good reason to decline. 

“Will you come over tomorrow?”

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” Edward said and gave an irritated huff as he ran a hand through his hair. “I just really enjoyed your company tonight. Maybe I’d like to see you when you don’t look like you’re wearing an uncomfortable evening gown?” He winced even as the words came out from his mouth. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean that. You look so completely beautiful tonight, I can’t even…” He trailed off and shook his head. “If I were to invite you over tomorrow, would you come?”

“I’m honestly not planning to put pants on tomorrow,” Bella said coyly. 

“While I would absolutely love to see that, I don’t think that you should venture out into public sans pants,” Edward said with all seriousness. Bella laughed.

“No. But maybe you could convince me to put on some sweatpants at least?” She offered him a hesitant smile.

“Yes, I think that you’ll find that I can be quite persuasive when the mood strikes me.” With one last crooked smile, Edward slid out from the limousine and turned to help Bella out. “Good night then. Be safe.”

“Yes, good night,” Bella said as she turned to hail a cab. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Anch'io— both google translate and a basic search on google has informed me that this is Italian for "me too" or "same". If this isn't correct, please let me know so that I might fix it.
> 
> If you're enjoying this, then I'd love it if you could take a few seconds to write out a review and leave some kudos.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a discussion about a past sexual assault.

“The weather app on my phone says that it’s 90 right now,” the text from Edward read. This was accompanied by a picture of the pool at The Towers. It had been ten minutes since it had come in, and Bella had spent that entire time freaking out about the entire thing. She finally called Rosalie.

“Edward wants me to come over and swim with him,” she said when the blonde had answered her phone.

“So?” Rose said simply.

“So? What do I do?”

“You go swimming, you dummy.”

“Yes, but what do I wear?”

“A fucking evening gown?”

“Ha-ha,” Bella said sarcastically. “But seriously, what do I wear? A thong?”

“Unless you want to look like a hooker who walked out from 2003, I suggest that you burn all of your thongs, babe.”

“You see? This is why I’m doing the back-alley stuff, and you’re the one in the bedroom. I don’t know about any of this stuff.”

“Just wear what you’d normally wear and be yourself. That’s what guys want to see. After all, Victoria does not make mistakes.”

“I still think that she’s making a mistake by putting me in this job.”

“It sounds like Edward is already starting to fall for you if he’s inviting you over and stuff. By the way; how was your date last night?”

“It wasn’t a date.”

“You went to a super nice restaurant with him and then to the ballet. That sounds like a date to me. The only thing that could have possibly made it any better would be ice cream and sex after.”

“We got frozen yogurt after.”

“WHAT? What else are you holding out on me?”

“I didn’t sleep with him,” Bella said quickly. 

“Why not? Did he not ask you up to his room?”

“He asked me up for coffee.”

“Sweetie, that’s a euphemism for sex.”

“I know; I’m not that dense,” Bella said with a roll of her eyes.

“And don’t you dare roll your eyes at me, Isabella!”

“I didn’t!” Bella sputtered out. But she was grinning like a loon.

“Take my advice, sweetie, and just be yourself. Act natural. Guys can smell a phony from a mile away, and while your working a job like this, it’s important that you don’t give him any reason to distrust you.”

“Okay. I know that I could count on you to guide me through this. Especially since you have training and I don’t.”

“Uh-huh.” Rosalie sounded distracted. “By the way, what did Edward say in regards to the incident the other night?”

“He gave me flowers.”

“Woooow,” Rosalie said. “Hey babe, why don’t you ever give me flowers?” Bella heard Emmett say something, but couldn’t quite make out what it was. “What kind of flowers? Roses?”

“No. Hyacinths. It barely fit through the door, it was that big.”

“Damn, that boy is setting the standards impossibly high for the rest of us. But anyway, if this hadn’t been your job, would you have accepted the apology?”

“I’m giving you a dry look, Rose.”

“Right, right,” Rosalie said. Bella heard the faint click of the lighter and a moment later, Rosalie’s exhale. “Well, why are you wasting your time on the phone with me, then? I thought your Eddy-boy asked you to go swimming with him.”

“I’ll call you later, then.”

“You’d better,” Rose said before the line went dead. Bella tossed her phone onto her bed and then pulled out some of the bags that she had yet to unpack from her shopping trip on Monday. She hadn’t exactly anticipated needing a bathing suit, but she’d bought one anyway, on the assumption that she could always wear it after the job was over. She wasn’t quite sure that it was something that she thought that Edward would like, but she decided to go with Rosalie’s advice and to just be herself. After all, that’s what she’d done last night, and Edward had seemed to like her well enough. 

Bella pulled on the tropical one-piece, and then pulled on a baggy, old t-shirt and a pair of soft shorts. She stuffed a change of clothes into her bag, stepped into a pair of worn flip-flops, and pulled her hair up into a ponytail as she left the apartment. After she got into a cab, she shot a text to Edward to tell him that she was on her way over. 

Edward met her in the lobby, dressed in swimming trunks and a white t-shirt. “I thought that you weren’t going to come,” he said as she walked over towards him. “You took so long to reply.”

“Sorry, I had to take care of something first,” Bella explained as they started walking over towards the back part of the hotel, where the gym was. They had an indoor pool attached to the gym, but also had a large pool with lots of slides outside. Edward lead her towards the indoor pool. “I thought that you’d want to go lounge out by the pool-side?”

“Are you mad? Everybody and their brats are out there right now,” Edward said with a slight chuckle. “When I came downstairs to wait for you, hardly anybody was inside.” Jasper was waiting for them in a lounge chair. The only other people in the pool room were an older couple who were doing aquatic aerobic exercises. “See? We’re practically alone right now.”

Bella nodded in agreement as she set her bag down on a lounge chair next to Jasper. “Towels?” she asked, and Jasper pointed to a stack of fluffy, white towels that sat along the wall. Bella grabbed a couple and draped them over her bag before she pulled her shirt off, dropped it onto the chair, and then dove into the deep end of the pool, regardless of the posted “No Diving” signs. She sliced easily through the water and resurfaced at the other end. She moved the loose strands of hair out from her eyes, and looked back to where Edward was standing on the other end, his arms poised to remove his shirt. “Are you coming in or what?”

“You neglected to tell me that you were a former Olympic swimmer,” Edward said and then pulled his shirt off. 

“What?” Bella said as she grabbed onto the edge of the pool. Edward sat down and put his feet into the water.

“Your swimming; I’ve never seen anybody but Olympic swimmers move like that before.”

“No, I’m not an Olympic swimmer,” Bella said with a slight shake of her head. “I just swim sometimes for exercise. Not my fault if I’m fast.” The fact is, Bella spent most of the time between her 13th birthday and 14th in the water. She’d drowned and been brought back so many times that year that she’d actually lost count. While she didn’t exactly like swimming as a result of her training, she found that it was a fairly effective way to keep fit. When she actually managed get to the gym, that is. 

“Come back over here, then,” Edward said. Bella released the wall, sunk back down into the water, and swam over to the other side. She resurfaced near Edward, and hung onto the wall to talk to him. “Are you certain that you’re not part mermaid?”

“No,” Bella said with a slight laugh. 

“Because if you were a mermaid and I a sailor, I would completely run my ship into the rocks you perched upon just to get a closer look at you.”

Bella considered Edward for a brief moment before she burst out laughing. “Stop laughing at me! I’m completely serious!” Edward said and splashed her. She only laughed harder.

“Dude, are you for real? Do you hear the words that are coming out from your mouth? No, not even words! Like, word vomit. From Mean Girls.”

“Come on; I thought that girls liked stuff like that,” Edward said. Now it was Bella’s turn to splash him.

“I don’t know what sort of girls that you’ve been hanging around, but it’s little wonder that you’re still single after hearing that garbage,” Bella said. Edward pushed himself off from the poolside and into the water, and then started to swim over towards Bella.

“Okay, now you’ve gone and done it,” he said. Bella smirked at him, dove under the water, and quickly swam around him. Edward changed course and Bella moved in reverse until she was caught in the corner of the pool. She could have easily swam away— even Edward knew that— but that was not the point of their little tete-a-tete. Edward held onto the pool wall with one hand; he didn’t want to make Bella feel like she was trapped, after all. 

“Well now,” Bella said, her voice low. Her eyes flicked first towards the other end of the pool— the older couple had left without her noticing— and then over to where Jasper was pretending to be reading a Guns and Ammo magazine. She looked back to Edward. “You seemed to have ensnared yourself a siren. What exactly are your demands? After all, if you capture one, she’s likely to grant you a wish in exchange for her freedom.” 

“But what if anything that the mermaid might be able to give me with her magic pales in comparison to the thought of having a beautiful mermaid stay at my side for the rest of eternity?” 

Bella scoffed and splashed Edward again. “Word vomit. Seriously; do you even listen to yourself? You sound so stupid.”

“Hey, come on. Don’t break character,” Edward complained. Bella rolled her eyes.

“Look buddy, make a fucking wish and I won’t have to slit your throat with my razor sharp teeth,” Bella said, and flashed him a feral smile. Edward gave a visible shudder, which only made Bella’s smile grow wider. “We’re a dangerous species, Mr. Sailor. Don’t you know? If our hobbies include luring sailors like yourselves to their deaths, can you imagine how we deal with love?” They both paused as they stared the other down. “So, Mr. Sailor,” Bella went on, her voice low. “Make a wish.”

Edward paused for a moment; he tapped his chin with the hand that wasn’t holding onto the pool wall in a gesture of deep though. “How about a kiss?” he said after a moment. Bella looked into Edward’s eyes and realized that her heart was pounding. Was this what it felt like to be 15, to be kissed behind the bleachers by some boy that you liked? Bella lacked any real experience in the department, and decided to push her emotions aside for the time being. 

She tipped her face up and Edward met her lips in a chaste kiss. Bella’s heart was pounding so loudly, she was certain that Edward could hear it. 

She didn’t know what to do with her hands— should she put them around his neck? She’d often seen couples doing that in public. Almost absently, she removed her hands from the pool wall, and then got a nose-full of water. Edward pulled away, and then laughed, but not unkindly. 

“It’s not funny,” she snorted as she put her hands back onto the ground and hoisted herself up so that she was sitting on the edge. Then she stood up. “I’m done swimming.”

“Oh come on,” Edward complained as Bella made her way around to where Jasper was sitting and pretending like he wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. “What about my other two wishes?”

“Those are genies, not mermaids,” Bella said as she grabbed one of the towels and started to dry herself.

“Shall we go up to the suite, then?” Edward asked as he pulled himself up and out of the pool as well. “I’m in the mood to watch Groundhog Day. No idea where the idea popped into my head, though.” He offered Bella a completely unapologetic smile. 

Bella pulled her soft shorts off and flung them across the room; they landed on Edward’s head with a wet splat. “They say that if you have a selkie’s skin, you can control her.”

“But aren’t selkies seals who can transform into humans?” Edward asked as he pulled Bella’s shorts off from his head and stood up. Bella considered this for a beat. 

“Yes,” she said. “But I thought ahead and brought clothes to change into.”

“Good thinking,” Edward said as he wrapped a towel around his waist. Bella wrapped one around her torso, and then a second one around her long hair. They followed Jasper from the pool area and into the elevator. Once in his suite, Edward showed Bella to the bathroom that was attached to the guest room— which Jasper was using— before Edward excused himself to change as well. 

With Jasper downstairs, Bella took the opportunity to plant a couple of bugs in both the bedroom and bathroom. Jasper was only Edward’s bodyguard, but sometimes, people liked to talk about their employers when they thought that nobody could overhear them. 

That task now completed, Bella quickly changed and then padded across the hall to Edward’s room. He met her at the door before she even had a chance to knock. His eyes flickered down to her shirt before he said, “Heathen Tour? I’m starting to sense a theme here with you.”

“I just grabbed it— I wasn’t even paying attention.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Edward asked as they started downstairs.

“Popcorn?”

“Popcorn?” Edward echoed with some confusion.

“You know… for the movie?” It’s something that us silly Americans like to do.”

“No, I know. It just surprised me, that’s all,” Edward said as he plopped down onto the overstuffed sofa that faced the wide-screen TV. “I asked you about drinks, and you say you want popcorn.” Bella sat down on the other end and tried to look like she was comfortable. Jasper had queued up the movie on Netflix, but he stood by the door into the other room. “Could you call room-service and get us some popcorn?” Edward asked as he grabbed the remote. Jasper left the room as the movie started.

 

* * *

As the credits started to roll, Edward turned to Bella. “Listen,” he started rather hesitantly. “I know that we both agreed to not talk about it, but that night is bothering me.”

“I’m sorry that I hit you,” Bella said quickly.

“And I’m sorry that I touched you without your permission,” Edward replied just as quickly. “But was that really all that it was about? A lack of permission?”

Bella pressed her lips together and considered the man next to her. She tried to think of what Rosalie would tell her to do— probably to tell Edward to gain his trust. But The Incident was something that Bella had never even told in complete detail to either Rosalie nor Victoria. 

Edward remained completely silent and still as Bella mulled this over. She finally gave a tiny shake of her head. The intense look in Edward’s eyes quickly softened to one of pity.

“Do you… Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Bella said quickly.

“Okay,” Edward said gently. “It just seems like you’ve still got some residual issues in regards to that. I know from personal experience that it helps to talk about it.” Bella wondered what sort of issues that Edward had, but didn’t press the issue.

Bella mused over his offer. She’d been okay in repressing The Incident up until the other night, but she hadn’t exactly been in a lot of situations like that before. Zero, to be precise. The two times that Bella had had sex, it had been on the order of Victoria. The guy had been another assassin, and their mentor had been just outside the room. Not once had Bella ever felt out of control either time. 

“His name was Mike,” Bella started slowly. “My mom’s younger brother. After my parents died, I went to live with him. I didn’t understand at first; I was only eleven years old for fuck’s sake. I only knew that it hurt. And if I said that I didn’t want to, then he’d beat me before he’d…” The word caught in Bella’s throat. She’d never actually said it out loud before. She’d only told Rose about the physical abuse part, although she suspected that Victoria knew about everything. “Before he’d rape me.”

There was a long, pregnant pause. Bella began to regret having said anything to him at all. “I’m sorry that that happened to you,” Edward said after a moment. “I honestly don’t know much about how to deal with something like that, but I have ears and I’ve been told that my shoulders are good for crying on.”

“I try not to let it define me. And I don’t dwell on it. Victoria taught me that I’m more than my shitty past.”

“Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good attitude to have, but talking with somebody who’s qualified about it can really help,” Edward said. Bella nodded in agreement. Not because she wanted to talk to somebody about it, but rather, because she felt like she ought to agree with him about the entire thing. “Actually, another reason why I brought it up was because we’re on the entertainment and celebrity gossip show, TMZ.”

“What.” Instead of a verbal response, Edward simply showed her a video on his phone. 

“So we have a video who was sent in by a fan,” a lady in the TMZ office started. “This was taken at a part in New York. Edward Cullen was spotted dancing with a girl who is currently unknown.” 

The image of the office was replaced with a blurry video of the incident in question. It was the same angle and quality of the photos that Victoria had shown to her the other day. 

“Whoa! Look at that punch!” somebody off camera said. “That’s going to leave a mark.”

“Honestly, if she didn’t want to be groped, why did she got to a party like that with Edward Cullen?” a man asked as the camera went back to the office.

“That still doesn’t give him the right to touch her without permission,” a woman said with an annoyed look on her face. 

“Whoa, somebody’s a feminist!” the same man said. Bella wrinkled her nose in disgust— they were treating her like she owed Edward sex and the woman’s reaction like it was some kind of a joke. 

The video ended and Edward looked at her. “I’m sorry; those people are repugnant. I just thought that you had a right to know.”

Bella looked closer at Edward’s jaw, and then tipped his head so that his jaw was in better light. “Are you… Are you wearing make up?”

“You punched me! People would talk if I went out with a big, yellow bruise on my jaw!” Edward protested rather defensively. 

“But everybody’s seen that video by now,” Bella pointed out. There was a beat of silence in which they glared at one another. Then, Bella’s head lolled backwards and she laughed loudly. “You got hit by a girl.” They were both lost to their laughter. 


	8. Chapter 8

Not even the most dedicated business men were at the coffee shop right now. Bella flipped her hood up and slunk into a corner booth as she waited. She didn’t have to sit alone long, as not even thirty seconds after she’d sat down, the familiar figure of her friend came into the cafe. She watched him absently as he ordered, received his coffee, and then left. She got up from the table and followed him out.

“How have you been, Bells?” Jacob asked around a mouthful of danish. 

“Good,” Bella said quickly. “It’s been too long.”

“Yes,” Jacob said with a slight nod of his head. “Vicky has me working to the bone. Not too many people anymore who are overly interested in the back-end parts of the life. Most people just want to be trained assassins.”

“Oh come on, Jake,” Bella said with a slight laugh. “Nerdy is the new chic. You must be swimming in-”

“Don’t say it!” Jacob said sourly. Bella laughed harder and rolled her eyes. 

“Come on, Jake. You and me, we coulda ruled the world,” Bella said. 

“Just one tiny crimp in that plan of yours,” Jacob said and gave her a gentle nudge with his shoulder. 

“Yeah yeah. The entire ‘don’t even like girls’ thing,” Bella said with a sour look. “Although, quite frankly, I don’t understand your problem. Where exactly does it state that co-owners of an underground crime guild have to be lovers as well?”

“In like literally every handbook out there,” Jacob said with a perfectly straight face.

“Hm, I must have skipped those lessons, then,” Bella said with equal seriousness. 

“But anyway, back to the reason why I called you for an in-person meeting,” Jacob said. He reached for Bella’s hand and entwined their fingers. Bella jerked away, but not before she’d slipped the tiny USB drive into the palm of her hand. 

“Excuse me, exactly what do you think that you’re doing?” Bella screamed at him. A couple of people who were out on the street stopped and stared at them.

“I was just trying to hold your hand, babe!” Jacob protested.

“I don’t even fucking know you! What the fuck is wrong with you!” Bella snapped. 

“Hey hey, leave the lady alone!” a large black woman said as she walked over towards the two of them. “Are you okay, honey?”

“Yes, thank you,” Bella said with sincerity. 

“Creep,” the woman said as Bella hurried away from both of them. 

Once she was around the corner, Bella shot Jacob a text, “Thanks a ton. I owe you one.”

“No problem, babe. Anytime,” was his reply. Bella went back to the apartment, where she then booted up her laptop and plugged in the USB drive. It was full of sound files that Jacob had gotten off from the bugs that Bella had planted in the guest rooms in Edward’s suite the day before. He had organized them according to what he thought might be of interest, but Bella needed to listen to most of it, because Jacob knew next to nothing about her job, and wouldn’t know the small things to listen to. 

The first file wasn’t overly interesting, despite the fact what Jacob had thought on the matter. It wasn’t anything but a rather long conversation about pizza and the room service for the entire hotel between Edward and Jasper that they’d had out in the hall. But the second file caught Bella’s attention. “No, he picked up the file the afternoon of our second day here,” Jasper said. He was clearly talking to somebody on the phone, as this conversation was much clearer than the other three had been. Bella cursed the fact that she didn’t have access to an untraceable phone tap. 

But, this was important. The second day, Edward had gone to a club in the middle of the afternoon and had picked something up that had been taped to the underside of a table. Bella had suspected that it was drugs, but now, she wasn’t so sure. She thought back to the size of the tape remains, and decided that it could have fit the size of a USB drive. But a file? That was even more baffling than the thought of Edward doing drugs. A file on what, though?

Bella listened to the end of the file, but it was disappointing. “No, he knows that very well,” Jasper went on. A brief pause. “Yes, alright. I’ll talk to you later.” Then, the sound of the phone being put back onto the receiver. 

Bella felt like Alice after she fell into the rabbit hole; the further in she got, the stranger things started to get. 

 

* * *

Bella stood on a corner near Central Park and absently flicked through her old messages with Rosalie as she waited for Edward to show up. He was late— she might say that it wasn’t like him at all, but she barely knew him to say that being late was something that he did frequently. Just because he’d shown up on time for the past few days didn’t necessarily mean anything.

She had half of a thought to send him a text to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten their lunch date and then stroll through the park, but then Edward and Jasper ran towards them. Edward was out of breath, and Jasper kept looking over towards the way that they’d come from. 

“Are you okay?” Bella asked with some concern. 

“Just a mob, not a big deal,” Edward said as he leaned on his knees to catch his breath. 

“Not a big…” Bella started with alarm. 

“It’s not a big deal because it honestly happens a lot,” Edward said. “I hate to say that I’ve become used to it, but, I’ve become used to it.” He straightened and ran a hand through his rather bedraggled hair; it didn’t do much to tame his sandy red locks. He flashed Bella a brilliant smile. “But anyway, let’s go grab a table before the paparazzi show up and really ruin our day.”

“What are you in the mood for?” Bella asked as she lead the two men away from the area. “There are a lot of great restaurants nearby.”

“Burgers?” Edward said after a beat. 

“Okay,” Bella agreed. They crossed the street and went into a small diner. They slid into a booth in the back, since a sign told customers to seat themselves. For a brief moment, the conversation came to a complete halt as the three of them looked over the menus, but after they’d given their order to the waitress, Edward turned his smile onto Bella again. 

“How have you been? How was your morning?”

“Pretty okay,” Bella said a bit hesitantly. “I met up with an old acquaintance of mine for coffee. Oh, and I managed to get some pretty last-minute tickets to Marriage of Figaro.”

“That’s wonderful,” Edward said. “I haven’t seen that one before. What’s it about?”

“Um… I honestly don’t know,” Bella said hesitantly. Edward gave a slight chuckle.

“Well, I suppose that we’ll find out then,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “Is it in English?”

“I don’t know that, either,” Bella said. “And now you’ve made me feel bad because I got you tickets to the opera but I can’t even tell you a single thing about it.”

“It’s the thought that counts, at any rate,” Edward said. “And you’ve been exceptionally good to me thus far.”

“It hasn’t even been a week yet,” Bella pointed out.

“Oh, but what a week it’s been,” Edward said and winked at her. Bella flushed, although she couldn’t quite place if it from embarrassment or annoyance. “But I’m also happy that you procured tickets to the opera without my prompting. I think that it’s because you’re really starting to understand my likes.”

Bella bit down the urge to reply that Edward had told her that he’d wanted to go to the opera and ballet about three days earlier. Bella hadn’t done anything, and it had been Victoria’s contact who’d gotten her the tickets. All Bella did was to pass the message along to Edward. Instead, she decided to change the subject slightly. “Although, I’m afraid that last-minute opera tickets are a lot different than last minute ballet tickets. While I was able to get seats in a box, we won’t be alone tonight.”

“While I’m saddened by the fact that I won’t be alone with you, we might have the prime opportunity to make some new friends,” Edward said simply. Bella wondered how whoever they were sharing the box with tonight would react to the party-boy faux celebrity. Bella saw a teenage girl press her face against the window of the diner. The girl pulled her face away, looked over her shoulder, and not a second later, there was a mob of people standing outside the diner. “If there is one place where I’m least likely to be mobbed, it’ll be at the opera. It’s not their forte.” Even with his back to the door, he seemed to know what was going on behind him. 

Bella watched as the waitress tugged down the blinds with irritation until the only thing that she could see of the crowd outside were just shadows. “Why aren’t they coming inside?” she asked with confusion. “Not like I’d want for them to come inside.”

“They might be willing to press around a building that I’m occupying, but to enter it would be to cross some sort of arbitrary line,” Edward said with a roll of his eyes as the waitress came out with their food. “I am so sorry about all of that outside.”

“Not your fault that they’re bat-shit crazy and apparently have nothing better to do with their time than to stalk and harass somebody on vacation,” she said with venom. “Want me to call the cops? Clear them out?”

“Only if they’re blocking the back entrance when we try to leave,” Edward said. The waitress clucked her tongue with annoyance before she went back to stand behind the counter. “It was bad enough when that video was sent in to TMZ; now, the press is going to have a field day.”

“What? Why?” Bella asked with a frown. 

“Because this is the second time that I’ve been spotted out with you,” Edward explained. “In the video from the other day, nobody knew who you were. You could have just as easily been some random chick who’d been at the party. But when people see the pictures of us enjoying lunch together…”

Bella sighed with annoyance. She’d known that this was coming, but she still wasn’t quite prepared for it. It’s one thing to tell yourself that you’re going to be mobbed, that strangers will come up and take your picture, that you’ll see your face on shitty celebrity entertainment shows… But it’s a whole other story when it actually does happen to you. 

Edward chewed thoughtfully for a moment and considered Bella. She was only just picking at her food, since the mob had shown up, she’d quite lost her appetite. “So, this friend of yours?” Edward started hesitantly. 

“Yes?” Bella said as she looked up at Edward. 

“Man or woman?”

“Jacob,” Bella explained. 

“Jacob?” Edward repeated with a rather astonished look on his face. 

“Yes,” Bella said with a resigned sigh. “We were lovers twice maybe ten years ago. It didn’t work out on account of Jacob realizing that he likes penises a hell of a lot more than vaginas.”

“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” Jasper said as Edward practically choked on the bite of burger that he’d just taken. 

“I was going to ask if the two of you had a history, but I suppose that that answered that,” Edward said once he could breathe again. 

“He probably likes you a hell of a lot more than he likes me in a romantic way,” Bella said, even though she knew that it wasn’t the truth. Jacob was just as annoyed as celebrity veneration as Bella was, even though they’d never specifically discussed Edward Cullen before. 

They lapsed into silence for a long while. Bella managed to eat half of her burger, even though she was completely not hungry. Edward paid the bill and left an exceptionally generous tip before Jasper escorted them from the back of the diner. They’d made it some distance into the park before the mob caught up with them. Except that it wasn’t the mob of teenage girls that Bella had been expecting.

“Edward, Edward, who was the girl at the club the other night?” somebody with a microphone asked the celebrity. 

“I’m sorry; I don’t talk to stupid people,” Edward said as he pushed the microphone away from his face. Jasper lead them through the press of people, who were all very unrelenting. They kept asking Edward stupid questions, all of which Edward ignored. 

“Hey wait, aren’t you the lady from the video?” somebody finally asked Bella. 

“Fifteen minutes,” Edward said as he consulted the time on his phone. Bella was certain that it hadn’t been fifteen minutes, nor that Edward had checked the time when the reporter first asked about her unknowingly. “You guys are super slow on the uptake.”

All of a sudden, all of the questions were being directed at her. “Why did you hit Edward? What were you doing at that club? How did the two of you meet? What do you do for a living?”

“Hey guys, do you want to hear a story?” Edward asked after about thirty seconds of this latest barrage. “But I’ll only tell you if you guys stop talking, okay?” The paparazzi fell silent. “Once upon a time, there was a young man who wanted to go for a walk through Central Park with a pretty girl that he liked. But then, a bunch of people came up to him and started to ask him the most completely mind-boggling, stupid questions in the history of the universe. For no apparent reason.” The silence stretched on for so long that it quickly became awkward. 

One by one, the people started to trickle away until there were only a couple of reporters left. Edward grabbed Bella’s hand and tugged her away from them. “If you hate being famous so much, why did you become famous in the first place?” Bella asked.

“I don’t know why I’m famous,” Edward said as they continued along, unencumbered by paparazzi. “I go to some parties a couple of times at a friend of a friend’s place in Birmingham… The next thing I know, my face is starting to appear in the middle section of those rags at the store. Some magazine says that they want to interview me. I only say yes because they’re going to offer me  £5,000 to do it. I mean, it isn’t like my family needs the money or that I specifically needed the money. I just thought that maybe it would clear the air about things. I went to a party, but then people start calling me a party boy.”

“I’m sensing a massive ‘but’ here,” Bella said with a sneer.

“But the only thing that they wanted to talk about was the parties. If I did drugs, what I liked to drink, what sort of music that I liked… Every time I tried to bring up Chopin or Shakespeare, they’d change the subject. In the interview that they ran, they pieced together things that I said and took things completely out of context.”

“That’s horrible,” Bella spat. “You should have sued.”

“I signed an agreement that said that I couldn’t do that, under any circumstances,” Edward explained. “Except, I only realized that it said that after I did try to sue the magazine for slander.”

“That’s awful. I can’t believe that somebody would be so desperate to paint you in a light like that that they’d stoop to such levels. I mean, what’s in it for them if you’re some party boy instead of somebody who likes to go to the opera and ballet?”

“I honestly have no clue,” Edward said with a frown. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something more, but shook his head and closed it. He pressed his lips together and considered Bella for a moment. “You told me about one of your previous lovers, so I think that it’s only fair that I do the same.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Bella said with a slight shake of her head. 

“I met Tanya through one of my mother’s friends,” Edward started. Bella recalled having read something about this Tanya person before; possibly in the interview Victoria had made her read. “I think that we are two very different individuals, but us being together made my mother very happy. And I’d do anything to make my mum happy.” 

Bella had always thought that grown men who bend over backwards to please their mothers were a bit creepy. Especially when it came to dating somebody that they weren’t compatible with. Honestly, if the mother really cared all that much for her children, she wouldn’t force them into relationships where at least one party was exceptionally unhappy with the situation. But, she remained silent on the issue and waited for Edward to continue his story.

“Tanya… I think that she is a very toxic person,” Edward went on. 

“What do you mean?” Bella asked with some confusion.

“Being around her, I think that it brought out the absolute worst in me.” It was all that he provided. Bella looked down and realized that Edward was still holding her hand. What was even stranger, was that she didn’t even mind at all. Edward didn’t even seem to realize at all, though. “So, what are you going to wear tonight?”


	9. Chapter 9

“Oh my, it’s so very nice to meet such a young couple who are fans of the opera,” the older lady said after the attendant had shown Edward and Bella to the box. 

“No, we’re not a couple,” Bella protested weakly, but nobody seemed to have heard her.

“Is this your first opera?” the lady pressed.

“No, but this is the first time that we’ve seen Marriage of Figaro,” Edward said. 

“This is probably about the hundredth time that we’ve seen it,” the lady said. She patted her overly-large red bouffant wig. 

“Martha, dear, aren’t you going to introduce us?” her husband said from his seat.

“Oh, excuse me!” Martha said with an obnoxious laugh. “Where are my manners? I’m Martha Yates, and this is my husband, Rolland.”

“Fredrick,” the man corrected.

“Oh, whoops! Rolland was the name of my third husband. Brilliant mathematician, but horrible in the bedroom department,” Martha whispered to them like it was some horrific scandal. Bella gave a slight nod of her head and looked to Edward for help— she was in way over her head with this one. 

“Why don’t we take a seat?” Edward said. He put his hand on the small of Bella’s back and gestured towards one of the empty chairs. Bella took the one three away from Fredrick, Edward sat next to her, and Martha sat between Edward and her husband. 

“So then… I don’t believe that I caught your names?” Martha went on.

“I’m Edward, and this is Bella.”

“How long have you two been together?”

“We’ve only known each other since Tuesday,” Edward answered honestly.

“Oh my,” Martha gasped. She held her hand to her chest like she was affronted by this, but then she laughed. “Brevity is the best sort of relationship, in my opinion. I like my men to be like Kleenex: soft, strong, but disposable.” She laughed again.

“Um…” Bella gasped with a horrified look on her face. Thankfully, at that moment, the lights flickered a few times to indicate that the show was about to start. Bella heaved a sigh of relief and sunk down low in her chair as the lights dimmed. Edward reached over and grabbed her hand. She gave him a confused look, and he offered her a small smile and a reassuring squeeze. 

 

* * *

Sometime right when Cherubino was hiding in the Countess’s closet, both Bella and Edward realized with some horror and disgust that Martha and Fredrick were practically having sex in their seats next to them. Bella shot Edward a look of pure disgust as she looked around the man who sat next to her. Martha was sitting on Fredrick’s lap; one his hands vanished under her skirt while the other was busy fondling her breast through under the top of her dress. 

Bella gave Edward a look that told him to do something about the matter. Edward awkwardly cleared his throat, and when that proved to be ineffective, he cleared his throat louder. He looked back to Bella, who only widened her eyes and gestured again towards the couple. Edward threw his program at them, and only then did they break apart.

“Oh my,” Martha whispered under her breath. Both Edward and Bella were looking at the stage with their lips pressed together, and tried to pretend like they hadn’t just seen what they’d saw. 

Bella found it exceptionally hard to focus on the rest of the act. When the intermission came, she wished that she wasn’t on the job, or else she probably would have gone ahead to drink as much as she possibly could. If this was ever at time to get shit-faced, it was now. Edward walked over to her and presented her with a cup. She rose her eyebrow in an unspoken question. “It’s sparkling water,” he explained, and then she accepted the cup. “Do you think that it’s too late to change our seats?” 

“It was pretty filled up,” Bella said. “Hence why we are sitting with Mr. And Mrs. Softcore Porn.” Edward snorted into his cup. “But sometimes people leave at the intermission, so maybe we could at least ask? The seats wouldn’t be nearly as nice, though.”

“Were they doing anything before the second act? I didn’t notice.”

“Me neither,” Bella said with a slight shake of her head. But when the two of them had started to get frisky, both Bella and Edward had noticed pretty quickly due to their close proximity to the older couple. 

Edward put his cup down on a nearby table and gently gripped Bella’s chin. “Maybe we could put on a show of our own?” he said to her. Bella flushed slightly but didn’t pull away. 

“How will that help?” she asked. “They only noticed when you threw something at them.”

“Maybe I just want to kiss you again?” Edward whispered as he bent closer to her. Bella lifted her face and Edward closed the distance between them until their lips met. Bella’s eyes slid closed and for a brief second, she thought that there were fireworks going off behind her lids as Edward gingerly nipped at her lower lip. But when Edward pulled away, she realized that it was only the lights flickering to indicate the end of the intermission. 

They went back to their seats, and choose to sit in the seats the farthest away from Martha and Fredrick. Bella tried desperately to keep her entire attention on the singers up on the stage. But Edward’s presence next to her was overly distracting, and she probably only caught about half of what they were singing. 

When the Count started to realize his mistake between Susanna and his own wife, Edward tugged on Bella’s hand to get her attention. She shot him an annoyed look and in doing so, she realized that Martha and Fredrick were back at it again. Edward leaned over the armrest and kissed Bella; gently at first, but then he started to apply more pressure and nipped at her lower lip and tongue. 

“Sit on my lap,” he whispered huskily against her lips. Bella was already pressed up against the unmovable armrest, and it dug rather uncomfortably into her side. She doubted that moving to sit on Edward’s lap would improve the level of comfort. She firmly shook her head, pulled away from him, and chucked her own program at the other couple.

“Oh my,” Martha whispered as the two of them pulled apart. The singers finished their song, the orchestra gave one final note as the actors ran off the stage, and then the audience surged to their feet for a standing ovation. 

Edward tugged on Bella’s hand and practically dragged her out from the box with Jasper on their tail. “Is this our new plan to avoid the mobs?” Jasper asked as they went out the back door.

“Um… yes?” Edward said hesitantly as they got into a cab. Edward told the driver to take them to The Towers. When they pulled up in front of the hotel, Edward turned to Bella. “Please come up?” he whispered to her. 

Bella licked her lips and then pressed them together. “Maybe for a moment,” she said after a beat. Edward paid the driver as Jasper and Bella got out. They rode the elevator up in silence, and as soon as they got into Edward’s suite, Jasper immediately vanished. 

Edward took Bella out onto the balcony, and then reached up to remove the clip from her hair. The sharp wind twisted her brown locks around her face, and he reached up to brush it away before he leaned in to kiss her. They backed up until Bella ran into the safety railing, and she reached backwards to brace her hands against the brushed steel. Edward pressed against Bella, and she felt his erection press into her lower belly. 

Bella gave a slight start at the feel of his excitement, and pulled away slightly from him. “Are you okay?” he asked her gently as he lightly stroked her cheek with his thumb. Bella exhaled sharply through her nostrils and gave a rather hesitant nod of her head. “I’m not going to do anything that you don’t want to do,” Edward reassured her. Bella nodded slightly with agreement. “Would you like something to drink?” 

Bella shook her head this time. Edward leaned over to kiss her again, and once more, when he pressed against Bella, she gave another start. 

“I was under the impression that you’d had lovers in the past,” Edward said. “Or did you only just mean the word in the most antique sense?”

“One lover, two times,” Bella explained slowly. “And the entire set-up for both instances…” She trailed off, completely unable to properly explain the situation to Edward. 

“Not at all like this?” Edward supplied after a long stretch of silence. She nodded. “How can I help you to feel that comfortable again?” Bella highly doubted that Edward would want for the crime lord who had filled the hit order on Edward to stand outside of their bedroom door while they got busy just for the sake of Bella’s emotional health in regards to sex. Even she knew that it was a little creepy with the entire mother/daughter relationship that Bella had with Victoria. Not to mention the fact that Bella would have to explain why Victoria had been standing outside of the door the first two times. 

“And don’t ask me to come out as gay after,” Edward said before Bella could come up with a good response. She gave a slight laugh. 

“You have absolutely no idea how completely demoralizing that it was when, halfway through, he stops, looks me in the eye, and says to me, ‘Bells, I think that I’m gay.’”

“What timing,” Edward said with all seriousness. Bella gave a slight chuckle and shook her head. 

“His timing could have been better, yes. But I think that it must have been a massive relief for him. Not only to have the courage to tell me, but also for him to admit the truth to himself,” Bella said as she wrapped her arms around herself. Edward gave a slight nod of his head in agreement. “I’d known Jacob for a while, but I have to admit, I think that I was relieved a bit, too. Being with him in that way was a little too awkward for me. Which I think might have also contributed to why I didn’t freak out when I was with him. I might have been just so focused on squishing my brotherly feelings for him down that I wasn’t even thinking about…” She trailed off and shifted her weight from her left to right. “But I never had any sort of freak out with Jacob. Not like this. I felt very safe with him.”

“I wish that I knew how to make you feel safe with me,” Edward whispered. Bella looked down at the city that continued to hum with life below them. 

“I wish that, too,” Bella whispered. And not just for the sake of the job, but so that maybe she could go and have a life outside of her work. Like Rosalie. She was comfortable with who she was, and wasn’t hindered by a disgusting past. Not only was she able to have a healthy relationship with somebody who wasn’t related to her work, but she also had a pretty decent sex life. 

Or at least, that’s what Bella assumed from the screams that came from Rosalie’s room whenever Emmett spent the night. 

Bella had never craved any sort of romantic relationship. She thought that they were messy and would only end in tears. Her uncle had hurt her. And even though she knew that she wasn’t in any real danger with Jacob, being with him had still terrified the everliving crap out of her. 

But, after Bella had spent a few days with Edward, she began to realize that, maybe there was more to the entire romance thing than physical and emotional pain. After all, people kept going back to love, even after they’d been hurt. 

Bella turned away from Edward and put her hands on the railing again. It was still slightly warm from basking in the summer sun all day long, and for some reason, the heat was oddly reassuring to her.

“Bella?” Edward said gently. His hand was close to her arm— Bella could sense it even though she couldn’t actually feel or see it— but he didn’t touch her. 

“Sorry,” she said as she looked over to him. She offered him a small smile, which he did not return. “I just get so lost in my thoughts sometimes. I know that I shouldn’t, but…” 

Edward reached into his pocket, came out with a handful of change, and then offered Bella a single penny. She laughed, and pushed the coin back towards him. “No, I was just thinking about Jacob. We’ve known each other since we were kids. We… um…” She stumbled over her words for a moment as she tried to come up with a near-truth cover-story for how she’d met Jacob. “After Victoria started to take care of me, she sent me to this boarding school. It was where we’d met. Jacob is a year younger than me, but he was super smart, and I missed out on a lot thanks to my parents dying and everything that happened with my uncle. He was always so sweet to me. There was a real nice garden there, but… um… the teachers, they’d get mad if you picked the flowers, you know?” Edward nodded with understanding. “But when I first got there, I was so broken. I wasn’t quite over the death of my parents, and I was dealing with the stuff that my uncle had done to me… And then, here’s this real sweet boy who comes to my room with a handful of dandelions.” 

“I gave you flowers,” Edward pointed out.

“You gave me hyacinths.”

“You want me to give you a handful of weeds?” Edward asked with a raised eyebrow. 

“That’s not the point,” Bella said with a slight shake of her head.

“Then what is the point, exactly?”

“It’s…” Bella opened her mouth to say more, found that she didn’t exactly have a point for the story, closed her mouth and gave a slight shake of her head. “I guess that I don’t exactly have one.”

“Let’s go inside?” Edward suggested. Bella took her hair clip from the railing and followed Edward inside. He sat down on the piano bench and patted the space next to him. Bella perched on the edge, and watched as Edward lifted the lid on the keys and aimlessly started to plunk at them. “Wait, I know,” Edward said after a moment. 

He started to play a slow, jazzy song. “I’m so unhappy, what’ll I do?” Edward started to sing. “I long for somebody who will sympathize with me. I’m growing so tried of living alone.” Edward lifted his fingers off from the keys after he’d finished the song and the last chord melted up into the air. 

“That was real nice,” Bella whispered to him. The double meaning of the song did not escape her at all. “You have a wonderful voice.”

“Thank you,” Edward said as he half turned to her. “Now then, I know a lot of songs, so what’s your fancy?”

Bella ran through a mental list of all of the songs that she knew that Edward might know how to play as well. Then, she tried to narrow down her search to songs that had some double meaning as well. After all, two could very well play at that game. 

“Okay, do you know ‘Bird in a Gilded Cage’?” Bella asked after a moment. 

“This one?” Edward said, and slowly started to play the opening to the song. 

“That’s it!” Bella agreed. “Can you start from the chorus?” Edward nodded, and started to play, and Bella joined in. “She’s only a bird in a gilded cage, a beautiful sight to see. You may thing she’s happy and free from care; she’s not, thought she seems to be.”

After the song had come to its end, Edward stilled with his fingers over the keys. He silently turned to Bella, who lifted her eyes from his hands to look him in the eye. 

Their lips met in a brief but passion-filled kiss before Bella pulled away. 

“I… I should go,” she stammered as she scrambled to her feet. 

“You don’t have to,” Edward said gently as he looked up at her. 

“I should.” Bella was already walking across the room to the door. Edward stood and followed her over, and then opened the door for her. 

“I’ll call you tomorrow?” he asked. Bella pressed her lips together but nodded anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edward’s song is “All By Myself” by Irving Berlin. It’s in the public domain, and you can find the sheet music on its wikipedia page. 
> 
> Bella’s song is “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” by Arthur J. Lamb and Harry Von Tilzer. It’s also in the public domain. Although the song is about a woman who married a man for money instead of love, I think that Edward would read between the lines of the actual song to the reason why Bella choose to sing it.


	10. Chapter 10

Even though time began to pass and blur as Bella continued to get closer to Edward, she never once forgot that she was only doing this as a part of her assignment. Somebody had ordered a hit on Edward, and it was Bella’s job to make sure that Edward was killed. But still, she had completely no idea how it was that Rosalie could take on job after job like this; it was emotionally draining. When Victoria handed her the name of some guy to kill, Bella’s interactions with them were exceptionally limited. She never got to know them on such a personal basis like she was with Edward.

After the mystery thing that Edward had picked up at the night club, Bella hadn’t noticed anything strange about his behavior. And the bugs that Bella had planted all over Edward’s hotel suite slowly over the course of two weeks had revealed nothing. The most interesting thing had been the first 12 hours that she’d first placed the bugs in Jasper’s room. 

Thus far, the past three weeks had been nothing but going to the opera and occasionally to some strange rave-like party that Edward would drag her to. All-in-all, it was turning into a very boring job. 

Of course, Bella knew that this couldn’t last. She hadn’t heard from Victoria since the disastrous events at the second party with Edward. She hadn’t received any new orders other than to make Edward fall for her. But, Edward would leave New York and return to London in a few days. And Bella couldn’t possibly imagine that Victoria would want for her to actually go to London.

Very early one Saturday morning, Bella was awoken by somebody pounding on the door of her apartment. Bleary-eyed, she padded through the living room and opened the door to find Victoria standing there. Her mentor didn’t wait for an invitation inside and just pushed the door open the rest of the way and marched inside.

“Yes, please, come in,” Bella said. “I wasn’t sleeping at 4 AM or anything.”

“Oh good, I’m happy to hear that you were already awake,” Victoria said simply without a hint of sarcasm. “I know that you are very busy with your job and I am busy running a criminal empire, but Mr. Cullen will be returning back to Europe in a few days. I wanted to come by for a status update.” Bella blinked with some surprise— she’d been certain that Victoria had come by to deliver the final hit order.

“Um… everything is going well, I think,” Bella said. “Edward and I have been spending a lot of time together.”

“Good, good. And has he told you that he loves you yet?”

“What? I’m sorry, but what sort of bodice rippers have you been reading?” Bella asked sharply. “People don’t fall madly in love with others in the matter of two and a half weeks.”

Victoria waved this tiny bit of logic away with an irritated hand gesture. “But surely he must have given some indication to you,” Victoria pressed. “Especially while the two of you are in bed.” Bella pressed her lips together and couldn’t meet the red head’s eyes. “You foolish fuck-up! What the hell have you been doing these past three weeks if you weren’t sleeping with him?”

“I hate to break this to you, but jumping into bed with a person as soon as you lay eyes on them isn’t exactly a healthy start to any sort of a relationship!” Bella rounded on Victoria. 

“I’m not paying you to be in a healthy relationship with him! For fuck’s sake, you’re hired to fucking kill him! Does that sound healthy to you?!” Victoria countered. 

“Okay, first of all, you specifically told me to make him love me. And Edward is definitely the ‘love them and leave them’ kind of guy,” Bella argued. “And exactly how long do you think that Edward would have stayed around if I’d had sex with him the first night that he came to New York?” She paused, but Victoria did not reply. “And instead, we’ve been enjoying one another’s company the entire time that he’s been here. And I think that you knew that Edward wasn’t looking for an easy bang, or else you would have assigned him Rosalie instead.”

“He’s going to leave in a few days,” Victoria went on without comment. She pulled something out from her purse and tossed it to Bella; it was a passport, with Bella’s name and picture in it. “Make sure that you’re invited to visit him in London. Call me when that happens. And for fuck’s sake, you silly girl! Sleep with him!” She left without another comment. 

After Bella had locked the door, she went into her bedroom, but was much too wound up to even begin to think about going back to sleep. It was barely 4:30; too early to call Edward. 

She fretted about becoming intimate with him. Despite the fact that she was now much closer to Edward and had started to become more relaxed around him, she still had panic attacks every time he tried to initiate something with her. Victoria hadn’t seemed to give any indication that she knew what was really holding up that side of their relationship… but mostly because Bella had never told her about it. After all, Victoria had stood outside the room while Bella and Jacob had had sex both times, so she probably thought that Bella had somehow managed to overcome it on her own. 

Bella went over to her closet and threw the doors open. Well then. If Victoria wanted her to have sex with Edward, then she was just going to have to recreate the feeling of safety that she’d had with Jacob as much as she possibly could. 

 

* * *

“Hey you,” Edward said once he’d opened the door to the suite and found Bella on the other side. “I know that I said that I wanted to see you, but it’s barely 7. I haven’t even showered or had break-” Bella cut him off with a kiss. 

“I know that you’ve probably only just woken up, but I just had to see you,” she explained, her lips barely a millimeter away from his.

“If this is how you’re going to greet me every morning, then I’d be happy to let you interrupt my morning ritual,” Edward replied before he pulled her in for another kiss. They only pulled apart when the elevator in the tiny hall dinged. “And that would be my breakfast. Maybe we shouldn’t stand out in the hall?” Bella nodded in agreement and went inside the suite while Edward greeted the lady who had come up with a wheeled cart. Jasper came into the room as Edward brought the cart inside. 

“Good morning, Bella,” Jasper said curtly. 

“Good morning,” Bella replied. Awkward silence followed. 

“I just got back from my morning run, so I’m a bit sweaty right now,” Edward said with some hesitation. 

“I don’t mind,” Bella said quickly. Her eyes darted over to Jasper. “Would you mind if I spoke to you alone?” Jasper quickly disappeared after a quick glare from his employer. 

“Of course not,” Edward said quickly once Jasper had left. He picked up a watermelon square and bit into it, and then picked up a napkin as the juice ran down his chin. “What’s up?”

“It’s just that you’re going to be going back home in a few days,” Bella started. 

“Don’t remind me,” Edward said as he put the last of the fruit into his mouth. “I’ve been having a really great time avoiding all of Alice’s calls under the guise of being on holiday. I’m actually going to have to start talking to her once I get back.” Bella gave him a dry look, and Edward’s smile quickly faded. “But I’m going to miss you a lot, too. I’ve… sort of gotten used to getting to see you every day.”

“Me too,” Bella whispered softly. Edward picked up another piece of watermelon and offered it to Bella, but when she went to grab it, he pulled his hand away. He did this twice more before Bella, with a stern glare at Edward, closed her eyes and tilted her head back slightly. Edward placed the fruit against Bella’s lips. Bella took a bite, and then pulled back with some surprise as the juice ran down her chin. 

Then, Edward leaned forward and slowly ran his tongue up Bella’s chin to lick up the sticky mess that he’d inadvertently created. A shiver went down Bella’s spine, although she couldn’t quite say if it was from nerves or eager anticipation. She moved her lips slightly and they brushed against Edward’s lightly until he caught them in a proper kiss. She shivered again as he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her him closer to him. 

“Are you sure?” he whispered. 

“This is something that I want,” Bella replied. Edward tugged on her hand and lead her over to the staircase. They walked hand-in-hand upstairs and into Edward’s bedroom, where he closed the door behind them, but didn’t lock it. Although Bella had spent the past couple of hours mentally psyching herself up, she was glad for the little gesture on Edward’s part. She knew that it was just a simple lock— all she had to do was to twist the knob from the inside and it would unlock— but that wasn’t the point. 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable at all, so if you want to stop, just say the word, and I will,” Edward said. Bella nodded in agreement and went to sit on the edge of the bed. Edward sat next to her. He cupped her chin gently with his hand and tilted her face over so that he could kiss her. They were both at rather awkward angles, so Bella moved so that she was sitting fully on the bed. Edward’s hands were gentle against her as he wordlessly encouraged her to move closer. 

His fingers scrunched up in the fabric of her blouse. Even though they were clenched, Bella could still feel the slight, nervous tremors. This was okay. She was okay. This was like with Jacob, with the nervous anticipation, rather than with Him, who had been experienced. Never once during any of those encounters had His hands shaken like Edward’s were doing now. 

Bella gently pressed against Edward until he tipped backwards and eventually fell against the pillows. She crawled over him, and gently pressed her lips along his strong jaw. Edward reached up and gently pulled the hair tie out from her hair, and she shook her hair out until it cascaded down around their faces. She offered him a hesitant smile and he pulled her down for a kiss. 

Edward’s hand smoothed out the wrinkles that he’d made on the back of her blouse, before they ran down the fabric until he reached the end of it. Bella gave a slight start at the feel of his overly-warm fingers against her lower back. “Okay?” Edward asked with some worry.

“I’m fine,” she reassured him before she kissed him again. Edward pressed his hands gently to her back, warm, warm… too warm. Unease crept up into Bella, but she pushed it down. She tried to think of her assignment. Of how completely disappointed that Victoria would be if she failed this one, simple thing.

But as Edward’s hands moved higher and higher, the unease in Bella grew more and more. Finally, when Edward’s fingers gently touched the clasp on her bra, she snapped. She jerked away from him, a wild look of panic in her eyes. “Bella?” Edward whispered hesitantly. Bella surged to her feet and ran from the room. “Bella!” Edward called out as he ran after her, but she was already halfway down the stairs by the time he even got out from the bedroom. Bella ran from the suite, and chose to go to the emergency staircase instead. 

She lost track of how many flights that she ran down, but eventually she stopped in the middle of the stairs and just swayed on the spot. A cry-hiccup bubbled past her lips against her will and then she started to sob in earnest. Something was very wrong with her. Normal people did not have panic attacks over the thought of making out with somebody. Normal people did not run crying from the room every time somebody tried to reach second base. 

Bella leaned against the wall as she dried her tears with the back of her wrist. But normal people were not trained assassins, she reminded herself. There was literally nothing normal at all about Bella Swan. 

But, it still was rather upsetting that she couldn’t even do this one thing. To Bella, this was no longer anything that had to do with Victoria or the job. This was about proving to herself that she could have a healthy, sexual relationship with another person. And maybe she was using Edward to get the results that she wanted before she killed him. So what? Edward would be dead in a while, and Bella would be free to seek out somebody on her own terms. 

Bella took a deep breath and stood up straight. She smoothed out her blouse, and tried to fix her hair. She had no idea what had happened to her hair tie, but it was probably lying on the floor in Edward’s room. She never let her emotions get the best of her on other jobs, and this was a job. She would not let Him prevent her from completing this job, no matter what it took.

She walked down to the next floor, went out into the hall, and called up the elevator. 

“Oh, Ms. Swan? Some more flowers came for you,” the doorman said as Bella walked up to the building. Bella pondered at how fast that Edward had gotten the flowers delivered; he must have the florist on speed dial or something. Unlike the first time Edward had given her flowers, these were downright subdued. A dozen red rosebuds. “He must really like you.”

“He likes me more than I like myself right now,” Bella said as she accepted the beautiful display. As she rode up to her floor, she pulled the card off. 

“I hope that you can forgive me for messing everything up again,” it read. “I made a reservation at The Vanilla Groove for 8 tonight. If you don’t show up, then I’ll completely understand.”

Like the first card, this one was also simply signed with E. 

 

* * *

Bella met Edward for dinner at the restaurant. They did not talk about that morning.

The next day, they spent aimlessly wandering the streets, hand-in-hand. They joked with each other, window shopped, and Edward signed autographs and posed for pictures for the dozen or so fans who stopped him. They still did not talk about the previous day. There were two days left. 

Bella awoke on the morning of Edward’s last day in New York and felt like she’d swallowed a cannon ball. She’d tried to sleep with Edward, and it had only ended with her running from the hotel suite in tears. She wasn’t going to try that again, no matter what Victoria might say. 

She rolled over in bed so that she could grab her phone. One new message from Edward. 

“I have something to do today, but will you come over to the hotel around 8 tonight? Ask at the front desk for me.” It was a strange and oddly cryptic message. It was puzzling to Bella because she’d thought that he would have wanted to spend his last day with her. But there wasn’t anything that she could do about that.

Instead, Bella threw on some clothes, picked up a cap and stuffed her hair through the hole in the back, and went off towards the Towers. She went into the cafe across the street from the hotel, bought a cup of coffee and a newspaper, and then sat in the booth in the back corner by the window. 

She knew that she spent too much time at the cafe over the past month, but it was the best spot for watching the front door of the hotel. Besides, it was a busy part of town and had a lot of customers. Even if people did remember her, she was just some lady who came in frequently and read the newspaper in the corner. Nothing usual about that. 

Around noon, she saw Edward and Jasper get into a cab. Bella called up the taxi commission, but before she was able to get a real person, they came back. Both Edward and Jasper were carrying an absurd about of red, pink, and white roses. Bella felt her face heat with awkward embarrassment. She drained the last of her coffee and left the cafe. Whatever Edward was doing, it wasn’t suspicious. At least not this time. She didn’t want to ruin what little surprise that there was now that she’d seen the flowers, so she went back to her apartment. 

 

* * *

Exactly at 8, Bella walked into the lobby of the Towers and asked for Edward at the front desk. “Ah yes, Ms. Swan,” the receptionist greeted her with a knowing smile. “Mr. Cullen has reserved the rooftop for the two of you tonight. I’ll call up to let him know that you’re on your way.” 

Bella’s heart was pounding as she rode the elevator all the way up. Even though she knew what she would find, she was still nervous as hell. This was Edward’s last night here, and obviously, he had wanted to do something special for it. 

The elevator didn’t go all the way to the top, and Bella had to walk up a flight of stairs to reach the rooftop door. She pushed the door open with shaking hands, and couldn’t help the gasp that fell from her lips. 

A trail of pink, white, and red rose petal lead to a small terrace, where Edward stood at the edge of a blanket. A picnic was spread out, and white tea lights were clustered around the far edges of the blanket. Somebody had set up a portable canvas tent with gauzy, white fabric that billowed with the wind; fairy lights were wrapped around each of the support legs. 

“I wanted to do something special for our last night together,” Edward said as Bella walked up to where he stood. 

“It’s wonderful,” Bella said with a small smile. She didn’t know what else to say. Edward gestured for Bella to sit on one of the overly plush pillows that were clustered around the blanket. Bella sunk down onto her knees and Edward sat next to her. 

“I hope you like fondue.” 


	11. Chapter 11

Bella leaned forward to accept the chocolate-dipped strawberry that Edward held out for her on the end of the fondue fork, but he pulled it away at the last minute and leaned forward instead for a kiss. Neither of them had drunk anything but sparkling water for the duration of the evening, but Bella’s head felt foggy, as if she’d drunk a bottle of wine. Her actions were slow, but it was hard to tell if it wasn’t just in the moment. 

She put her hands on one of the pillows behind her, and when Edward leaned into her after her slight change in position, she lay back against the pillows. She wrapped her arms around Edward’s neck and pulled him down to her lips. “Are you-” Edward started, but Bella cut him off with a gentle shush and a finger pressed against his lips.

“Don’t talk,” she whispered before she replaced her finger with her mouth. She ran her fingers through his hair, and then again. She noticed a slight tremor in her hands as she trailed her fingers down the side of his face, his neck, and then around the edge of his shirt until she reached the center. Her hands were shaking so badly that it was hard for her to undo the buttons, but she somehow managed. Edward did not try to stop her, nor did he offer any sign of encouragement, verbal or otherwise. 

Of course Bella had seen Edward’s chest the day at the pool, but now, she allowed herself to touch. Her touch became more bold the further her hands traveled down Edward’s torso until she reached the band of his jeans. Then, she pushed his shirt off his shoulders and Edward pulled it off the rest of the way. 

After he’d tossed his shirt aside, Edward pushed his hands up Bella’s blouse. She didn’t flinch away when he did so, or run off crying when he reached her breasts. He barely even touched her, and helped her into a sitting position so that he could pull it off from her. The only reason why Bella wrapped her arms around her torso was because of the sharp wind. “It’s cold up here,” she complained as her nipples grew hard. 

“Sorry,” Edward said. “It wasn’t exactly something that I’d anticipated. It is the middle of summer, after all, and it was like 85 today.” He leaned over her until she fell back against the pillows again. “How about we find some way to keep ourselves warm?”

“Hmmm, yes, I would like that very much,” Bella agreed. She didn’t know why she was now more agreeable to the thought of sex with Edward. Nothing had changed since the other day, only that this was literally Edward’s last night in New York. The feeling wasn’t exactly something that she could easily put her finger on. 

Edward leaned over her, his breath hot against her bare stomach. He pressed a lingering kiss just above the start of her appendectomy scar, before his hands lightly trailed down the tops of her legs. He looked up at Bella from where he was, and then slowly started to move his hands up her inner thighs; he was barely putting any pressure on the gesture, but Bella felt it as if his hands weighed a thousand pounds. 

His lithe fingers deftly popped the button on her jeans and slowly slid the zipper down. He still did not break eye contact, and it was starting to make Bella a little uncomfortable. He finally looked away as he moved down to her feet. He gently picked up one of her boot-clad feet, pulled it off, and dropped it to the side. He repeated the movement with Bella’s other foot, and then he reached for her hips. “Up,” he whispered gently, and guided Bella so that her weight was balanced on her feet for a moment while he slid her jeans off from around her hips and butt. 

Once the jeans had been tossed aside, Edward crawled back on top of Bella and offered her a sweet, lingering kiss. He ran his fingers lightly down the column of her throat, and where ever his fingers touched, his mouth was sure to follow seconds later. His fingers lead a swirling path down to the top of her bra. He lightly traced along the simple, lace boarder, but that was all that he did. He reached the dip between her breasts, and his finger caught on the middle part of the bra before he pulled it away with a slight flick of the fabric. 

Bella wondered what he was waiting for; she looked up at him, and realized after a moment that he was waiting for permission. She sat up and reached around to undo the clap on her bra. It fell forward a bit, but she caught it with her other hand so that she wouldn’t reveal herself to him all at once. She peeked at him through lowered lashes, and he offered her an encouraging smile. Bella slowly removed her hand and let her bra fall away. 

She awkwardly lay back and balanced her weight on her feet again as she pulled her panties down, and kicked them off the rest of the way. Her eyes slid closed with awkward embarrassment as she felt the weight of Edward’s stare as he took her all in. “Don’t close your eyes,” he whispered as he leaned over her. “I don’t want for you to feel embarrassed. You are so very beautiful.”

“I’m not, though,” Bella replied before she could censor herself. 

“That isn’t true.”

“No, I’m being serious,” Bella protested. “All my life, I’ve been shows pictures of women and people tell me that this is what beauty is. I’m none of those things.”

“Those people have obviously never seen you,” Edward said with a snort. The look in his eyes softened and he gently stroked her cheek. “I can see that you aren’t going to listen to a word that I have to say, so I should put my energy towards better things.” He leaned over her belly and pressed a series of gentle, open-mouthed kisses on the skin there, in a trail that lead down to Bella’s pubic hair. 

Bella knew that most guys would prefer for girls to be completely clean shaven, but, throughout the entire ordeal, Rosalie had continued to stress to Bella that she needed to be true to herself. Shaving down there had never been something that Bella had been overly keen about trying, and she hadn’t even though twice about not doing it. Edward didn’t seem to mind, however, and he gently raked his fingers through the coarse hair. 

Edward readjusted his position, and then leaned over, close to Bella’s vagina. His breath was warm against her overly-sensitive flesh. Bella’s toes curled in anticipation, and she wondered what he was waiting for. Unlike a moment ago, he wasn’t making eye contact, and just seemed to be staring at her wet pussy. 

After a moment, Edward finally closed the distance between the two of them and lightly ran his tongue up Bella’s outer labia. Bella gave a start, and her breath caught in her throat at the delicate contact. He’d barely even touched her, and she was a quivering mass already; she couldn’t begin to imagine what penetration would feel like. Edward’s tongue parted both outer and inner labia and slowly ran up he length of Bella’s vagina. This time, the moan did not get caught in her throat, and she ran her fingers through Edward’s hair.

Edward lightly scraped his teeth against her overly-sensitive clit, and a shiver went down Bella’s spine at the contact. It was becoming increasingly difficult for her to think straight— had it been like this with Jacob? No, she thought through the haze of her pleasure. She’d never felt like this in her entire life.

There was the logical side of Bella that kept up a running commentary and informed her of exactly what was happening. Bella shut that part of her brain down and tried to just focus on the delightfully sinful things that Edward was doing with only his mouth. After all, over-thinking the entire situation was what had lead Bella to running out on Edward the other day. 

Bella shut her thoughts down until the only thing that she was aware of was that if Edward stopped, she’d probably go mad. 

Her head tipped back and her eyes fluttered shut as something broke loose inside of her. She felt like she was dying, and wondered if it was okay for something to be this pleasurable yet painful. Uncontrollable spasms wracked Bella’s body, and she dug her fingers into Edward’s scalp unconsciously as she rode through them.

Bella swore that she blacked out for a moment, but when she opened her eyes, all she saw was the night sky above her. And Edward. He offered her a small but sweet smile as he gently pushed a strand of her hair out from her eyes. Bella lazily returned his smile.

“Are you okay?” he whispered. 

“Amazing. I’ve… That’s… Never before.” Bella struggled to come up with the right word to explain the situation to Edward. 

“I’m happy,” he said; he seemed to have fully grasped what she was trying to say. “I’m happy to have been your first real time. This is what your life should have been like, Bella. Not… horrors and an awkward coming out.” 

Bella closed her eyes and turned away from Edward with disgust at herself. How in the world could she use him like this? He was the kindest person and he treated her like she was a person, and not just some sex object. Edward caught her chin with his fingers, turned her head back around, and pressed a gentle, closed-mouth kiss to her lips. Even though their mouths were closed, she still caught a slight taste of her own, salty arousal. 

Edward sat up and quickly pulled off the rest of his clothes. Bella swallowed hard at the sight of his erect penis— it was a lot bigger than she’d thought that it would be. Jacob hadn’t exactly been tiny, but he was in comparison to Edward. He pulled something out from the basket that had contained their dinner. It was a condom, which he quickly tore open with his teeth and rolled onto himself. Then, he lay down on the blanket next to Bella and pulled her into his arms. Aside from the simple fact that they were both naked, it wasn’t an overly sexual act, but rather, a sweet and tender one. 

“You can still say no,” Edward whispered against her lips.

“No, I want to,” Bella reassured him. Edward gently coaxed Bella’s leg up on top of his own, and then he slowly and gently slid inside of her in that position. It wasn’t nearly as awkward as Bella had thought that such a position might be, and it was exceptionally intimate. 

As Edward slowly moved inside of her, Bella looked into his eyes. His pupils were so blown with arousal that his irises were little but a green ring around the black. Edward captured her lips in a sweet kiss, only this time, he didn’t hold anything back. Bella tasted herself on his tongue; much to her surprise, she found that she enjoyed the taste, but only because it was also mingled with the taste of Edward. 

Bella had never felt more vulnerable in her entire life than in this single moment. Disgust welled up within her and made her want to cry. Edward was so very sweet and he didn’t deserve to die. And he certainly did not deserve to be killed by her after she’d lead him on for all this time.

Edward, mistaking the tears that ran down her nose awkwardly, reached up and gently rubbed them away with the pad of his thumb. The simple gesture only made Bella start to cry harder. “Bella, what’s wrong?” Edward asked as he stilled. 

“N-nothing,” Bella sobbed. “Please, don’t stop.” If she allowed him to stop now, then she’d only feel worse. Edward started to move again, slower this time. He pressed kiss after kiss to Bella’s lips, and twined his fingers with hers. 

A feeling started to grow in Bella. She knew the name of it, and yet, it was completely nameless. She never wanted to let the feeling go, and at the same time, dreaded for the moment when it would hit her. Bella knew that Edward was going through the same thing. His gentle and rhythmic thrusts inside of her were starting to get rougher and less synchronized. 

Edward’s fingers tightened on her, his eyes fluttered shut, and he shook for a moment. 

Bella felt her high start to decline a moment and felt anger and disappointment that she hadn’t been able to orgasm a second time. Edward disentangled his fingers from hers and reached down to touch her. His thumb slipped across her clit, which was slick and over-sensitive with her arousal. It only took a few, simple touches from him before Bella felt herself fall over the precipice once again. 

As she came down from her orgasm, Bella rested her head under Edward’s chin. He wrapped his arms around her more tightly and started to gently run his hand through her hair. He did not pull his penis out from inside of her. 

Neither spoke; neither felt the need for words after such an intimate exchange. 

Guilt started to eat at Bella again. She felt like she was using Edward, and was now starting to question why somebody had even put a hit on him in the first place. She’d never really thought much about it before now, but now… 

She almost didn’t want to see him dead. She would actually be rather upset if he were to die; especially if she was the one to kill him. 

Tears started to stream down her face once again. “If I had know that you’d be this weepy, I would have brought some tissues or something,” Edward whispered as he rubbed at the moisture on her face. 

“I’m sorry,” Bella said, although she wasn’t quite sure what she was apologizing for. 

“Don’t say that unless you regret everything,” Edward said with a smirk. Bella looked at him, and his face fell. “Do you regret it?”

“No,” Bella said. “I think that I’ll likely remember this evening for the rest of my life.” And that only made her start to cry harder. “I’m sorry that it took me so long to get to this point.”

“I’m not, because tonight… this… All of this…” He pulled away from Bella briefly so that he could gesture around them. “It was perfect. The only thing that I’m sorry about is that I must return home tomorrow. I don’t think that I could bear to be apart from you for a single second after tonight. And especially not with you crying like this. But I must.”

“I know…” Bella sniffled. Edward handed her his shirt and she blew her nose on it before she tossed it aside once again. “They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Now who’s spouting purple prose?” Edward teased her. Bella replied by sticking her tongue out at him. Edward sat up suddenly and looked down at Bella with an eager look. It instantly put her on edge. “Hey, you should come to London with me!”

“Edward… I can’t…” Bella protested weakly. 

“No no, not tomorrow. I mean, you’d have to get leave from your work and you’d probably have to get a passport, right? Not to mention the fact that you’d have to pack, and that I only have one plane ticket, and it’s for me. Well, even if you did have a passport, and you wanted for me to just buy you new things while we’re in London, and you might be able to get onto the flight with me tomorrow because there’s always one person who never shows up… You’d still have to explain it to your work.”

“R-right,” Bella stammered. She knew that she really could just up and leave with Edward tomorrow, but it would completely blow the cover that she’d worked so hard to establish with him. Edward leaned over and offered her a lingering, wet kiss.

“Talk it over with your boss, okay,” he whispered against her lips. “And let me know what he says. Even if it’s a year from now, I will count the days until we can be together again.” Bella didn’t even feel like calling him out on his shitty word vomit, because, in this moment with Edward, she wanted that, too. 

She tipped her head back for another kiss, which he was quick to give to her.

 

* * *

Bella wasn’t quite certain how long that she should wait to get back to Edward about what her “boss” had to say. But, in the week that followed Edward’s return back to London, she moved back in with Rosalie. She thought for certain that she’d be happy to at least be able to sleep in her own bed once again, and to see Rose’s face every day like usual, but it was not the case at all.

In the week after Edward’s departure, it felt as if a cannon ball had been placed inside of Bella’s stomach. No matter what she did, the feeling would not go away. She was loathe to discuss the rather intimate and private details of the case with Rosalie, no matter how much her roommate might already know, however. 

So instead, she scheduled a meeting with Victoria, whom she had not seen nor heard from since Victoria had chastised her for not having slept with Edward yet. 

“I’m just wondering when I should call Edward to tell him that I’ll be able to come to London,” Bella said as the two of them walked side-by-side on the busy street. 

“Today’s Friday,” Victoria said absently. “And nobody works on the weekends, especially not your boss.” Bella looked over to her mentor, but her face remained impassive. “Call him on Monday. But tell him that you won’t be able to get away for another month. At least. But, continue to maintain contact with him. Have you been calling him?”

“We text,” Bella answered. 

“Continue to text him, then. I’ll arrange for your plane tickets when I feel as if you’ve kept him waiting. And not a moment sooner.”

“In the meantime, I think that I’d like to get back to work,” Bella said quietly. “I mean… my real work.”

“Yes, yes, I understood you perfectly,” Victoria said dismissively. “I have several jobs that I’ve been holding on to just for you because I know how much you like… that kind of work. I’ll send you the files tomorrow. You can have your pick of them.”

Bella didn’t wait until Monday and called Edward as soon as she got home from her meeting. She just wanted to hear his voice. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm wondering if I have to give this warning this far into an assassin AU story, but feel like I should. There's another killing in this chapter. So please don't say that I didn't warn you.

It had only been a month since Bella had last taken a proper job, but she hadn’t had any idea of how much that she’d missed it until now. She slunk through the crowds at Grand Central Station, and her eyes never once left her mark. 

He wasn’t anything to look at, and most people didn’t look at him twice as he walked past. But, Bella knew the truth. She’d followed the story as it had evolved over the course of two years on the news. He’d killed his wife and their two year old daughter. His bloody fingerprints had been all over the house, but his scum-bucket lawyer has gotten pretty much every bit of damning evidence thrown out and he’d walked free. 

The public had moved on and lost interest in him not even two days later. After all, people who brutally murdered their families were about a dime a dozen in New York. Nothing to see, move on to the next psycho. 

Bella had been more than happy to take the job when Victoria offered it to her. If the criminal justice system failed to uphold the law and let such a man walk free, then Bella felt as if it was her duty to make sure that they got their comeuppance. 

This was where she belonged, what she’d been trained to do. She’d been following him for hours now. She wouldn’t make contact with him until she managed to get him in a private place where nobody would find the body for hours. No messy entanglements, no room for his side of the story.

The only problem was that Bella believed that this man was truly guilty. After having been with Edward for an entire month, she couldn’t even begin to say what he was guilty of. Before she’d taken the job, she’d wanted to kill him based solely on the fact that she didn’t think that celebrities should be considered newsworthy. Especially not people who were famous for being famous. 

But, after that time, Bella had come to understand that Edward hadn’t asked for any of his fame. It started out as a young man who enjoyed to go to parties sometimes, turned into a heavily misquoted and out of context magazine interview, and spiraled into something that was completely out of his control. 

Bella mentally shook her head once she realized that her target was getting onto a train. She jumped into another car just as the doors slid closed. 

This wasn’t like her at all, to just let her mind wander while on a job. She’d almost lost sight of her target, and it was all because she’d been wrapped up in the ever-consuming thoughts of Edward. Granted, her work with Edward wasn’t over quite yet, but she had to focus on the job that she had right now.

She slipped between the other passengers on the train and went into the car that he was in. She spotted him easily— she had been following him all day, after all— and sat down on the other side of the car. She pulled a newspaper out from her bag and pretended to read it while she kept an eye on him. 

He rode for three stops before he got off and left the station. Bella was never less than a few feet behind him the entire way. He walked around the streets for a while before he went into a department store. He bought a couple of new ties, and then contemplated several suits while he talked to a sales assistant. 

“Can I help you?” another sales assistant said as he came up to Bella.

“I’m just thinking about something to get my boyfriend for his birthday,” Bella lied. 

“Most girlfriends just get their man a tie,” the man said. 

“Well, he’s very special to me,” Bella said, and then blushed slightly. “But, like I said, I’m just looking around for some ideas. His birthday isn’t for a while yet. But, you know; gotta start thinking about it so that I don’t just end up getting him a card to Home Depot again!” She forced out a little laugh. 

“Alright, just let me know if you have any questions,” the man said before he left to help somebody else. Bella looked around. In the thirty or so seconds that she’d been talking with the man, her own target had vanished. The sales assistant that he’d been talking to was helping somebody else, so Bella doubted that he was in the dressing room. Regardless, she waited a few minutes, but he failed to appear. 

“Fuck,” she whispered under her breath. Five hours wasted because she was distracted over Edward. She was starting to lose her touch. 

 

* * *

Bella trekked back to where her target lived. It was in a highly residential area, and there weren’t any shops around. It made for awkward stakeouts caused by overly noisy neighbors. But, she was used to awkward. A house on the corner, about four houses down on the opposite side of the street from her target’s house was clearly empty for the day. So Bella sat casually on the front step, shook out her newspaper, and settled in to wait for her target to return. 

As she waited, her mind drifted back to earlier in the store. How in the world could she have possibly been so damn stupid? It wasn’t like her to make up some overly elaborate lie to shake off curious passers-by. With a quick word and a smile, she used to be able to send them scurrying off in a hurry. But today…

She shook her head with annoyance. And earlier, at the subway station. She’d almost lost track of her target. And, both instances had a common theme: Edward. 

It was absurd: Even though her job with him wasn’t finished but rather, put on hold, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Was it because of the lack of completion? She’d never gone this long on a job before. 

It must be the reason, Bella concluded after a moment. She’d never taken a job that went on for this long. She would maybe tail a target for a day or two, but then, she’d kill him and that would be that. She was anxious to end the job, which was only making her distracted.

Victoria had already bought the plane tickets to London, but that was in two weeks. Bella felt anxious to get over there.

But, as she mulled this over, she realized that she wasn’t eager to kill Edward, but rather, to see him again. They sent texts to each other like crazy, but she’d only called him twice since he’d left. 

With a pang, Bella realized that she actually missed him. 

She was pulled away from her musings as a car pulled up in front of her target’s house. Her target got out after a moment and went to get a garment back from the backseat of the car. As Bella watched him go inside, she realized that he still lived in the house where he’d killed his wife and daughter. What kind of a person did something like that?

Bella got up, tucked the newspaper back into her bag, and casually strolled further down the street. As she walked, she pulled on a pair of crisp, white gloves so that she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints behind. It was the middle of the afternoon, and most people were at work or school. She hadn’t even really questioned why he wasn’t at work until just now, but it sure made her life a lot easier. 

And, as far as she could tell, her target was currently home alone. She walked up the short path to the front door and rang the bell. He answered after a moment.

“Hello, sir. I’m here to talk to you about the true word of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Chris,” Bella started. 

“I have religion and I go to church weekly,” he said with some annoyance. He was about to slam the door in her face, but then he stopped. “Wait, don’t I know you from somewhere?” Bella started to sweat— she’d been made. 

“I have been talking to some of your neighbors, so maybe-” Bella started, but he cut her off.

“Yes, I have! You’re the girlfriend of that Edmund Calwen celebrity!” Well, fuck. Bella couldn’t say that she hadn’t anticipated this, but it still came as a bit of a shock to her.

“It… It’s Edward Cullen, actually,” Bella said, and struggled to keep a smile on her face. “But, I’m not here as his girlfriend, I’m here to spread the good word about-”

“Yes, yes, I heard you the first time. Please, won’t you come in?” He opened the door wider and gestured for her to enter. This was almost too easy. Bella stepped inside and followed her target through the foyer and into the kitchen. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Water, thank you,” Bella said. She pulled out her stiletto when he turned around to grab a glass from the cupboard. When he went over to the refrigerator, Bella walked up behind him and stabbed him through the heart with the knife. 

She moved quickly out of the way as his body collapsed onto the ground. She bent over to wipe her knife off on his shirt, and turned around to leave. Before Bella left the house, she found the thermostat and turned the heat up as high as it would go. She wasn’t a forensic expert by any means, but she knew that excessive heat would help the body to decompose faster. It would likely be several days before anybody noticed that he was missing; he lived alone and didn’t appear to have any sort of a job. 

With that done, Bella quickly left the house and returned to her own apartment. 

 

* * *

“This is your captain speaking. We will be starting our descent to London in about fifteen minutes.” The announcement awoke Bella from a rather restless sleep. She hadn’t been on a plane since her parents had died, and she liked it even less now. But at the same time, she knew that it was a necessary evil, because, at the end of the eight hour flight, she’d finally be able to see Edward after a month-long separation. 

She didn’t want to think about Victoria. Or how Victoria had told Bella that she’d meet up with another agent while she was in England who’d give Bella the final instructions about her job with Edward. 

The plane landed, and Bella stood to grab her bag out from the overhead bin. After she’d gone through customs, she came out into the baggage claim area. Her eyes instantly took in every possible threat and exit in the room— it was a reflex— before she spotted Edward standing by one of the baggage carousals. 

Nothing seemed to really matter anymore. Not Victoria, not the bodies that Bella had left behind in New York, not the job. Because there was Edward, holding a bouquet of flowers, and she was very happy to see him.

Bella was hardly aware of crossing the distance that separated them, and then he was there, and he was hugging her, and everything was somehow alright in the world. As she fisted her hands into the fabric of his shirt, she realized how much that she’d missed the scent of his aftershave and shampoo.

Edward pulled back and offered her a sweet yet chaste kiss. “I got you these,” Edward offered as he pulled away from her. It wasn’t anything at all like the expensive bouquets that he’d given her in New York, but rather, looked like he’d picked it up at the grocery store on his way to the airport. 

“They’re wonderful, thank you.” And she meant it. They got Bella’s single bag and Edward lead her to where he’d parked his car. 

“Did you have a nice flight?”

“I slept most of the way through.”

“Probably for the best. I hate long flights,” Edward said with a slight nod of his head. Bella hummed with agreement. “Did you eat?”

“I had a bite on the plane, but I couldn’t eat much.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Are you sure? Because we could stop somewhere and get some-”

“Edward, would you stop?” Bella snapped at him. “I’m nervous enough over meeting your family. I don’t want to put it off any longer than I have to!”

“Don’t be nervous,” Edward said. He took his hand off the wheel and gently caressed Bella’s knee. “They’re all super eager to meet you. You don’t have anything to worry about.” He chuckled slightly. “Honestly, the way that Alice keeps going on and on about you, one might think that you were her lover instead of me.”

Bella looked out the window. They were quickly leaving the city behind, and even the signs of the suburbs were melting way to nothing but rolling, green hills. “I look at a map of England, and I see how tiny that it is in comparison to a lot of other countries,” Bella started. “But then I’m actually here, and I can see how completely stacked together that everybody is. But, we drive for an hour, and suddenly, there’s literally nothing around but open fields.” She turned to look at him. “How?”

Edward chuckled slightly. “Hey, we’re not the birthplace of Harry Potter for nothing, you know,” he said, and threw her a wink. Bella laughed, too.

They drove for about another hour before they got to a smallish town. Bella thought that this was surely where the Cullens must live, but they drove past without stopping. About five minutes away from the town, Bella saw a massive house. Surely…?

“No,” Bella said to Edward as they headed towards the manor house. 

“Welcome, Bella, to Oakenwall Manor,” Edward said. They drove up to the beautifully ornate wrought-iron and golden gates, which opened promptly for them, and Edward drove around a simple fountain that sat between the front gate and front door. Before Edward had even turned the engine off, the front doors flew open and a young girl ran out and down the three, narrow steps eagerly.

“I’m so happy that you’re here! You’re here!!” the girl exclaimed over and over. Once Bella was out of the car, she realized that it wasn’t a girl, but rather, a young woman who was close to Bella in age. Only, the woman probably wasn’t even five feet tall, which had lead Bella to her conclusion that she must not have been fully grown yet. Alice Cullen threw her arms around Bella and buried her face in Bella’s chest. “I thought that you would never ever ever never EVER get here! Ever!”

“Um…” Bella started hesitantly. “It’s… uh…”

“Alice, dear, let the poor girl a moment to breathe. Please,” a stern yet soft voice said from the front door. A middle-aged couple stood in the open doorway, and both looked amused over the actions of their daughter.

“Sorry,” Alice said as she pulled away from Bella. She offered Bella her hand instead. “Alice Cullen.”

“Bella Swan,” Bella said as she accepted Alice’s hand. 

“Oh I can tell that we’re going to be best friends already! Do you have any bags?”

“Um…”

“It’s okay, I’ve got them,” Edward said from near the trunk of the car. “Go on, then, Alice. Give Bella the tour, since I know that you’ve been on edge ever since I got home.”

“Yay! Come on, Bella! There’s so much that I want to show you! Oakenwall Manor is a really big place, and if we start right now, then maybe I can show you some of the best places before dinner and then-” Alice said in all one breath. 

“Alice, honey, Bella just got off from a long flight,” Esme said as Alice dragged Bella up to the front door. This brought Alice up short. 

“Oh, right,” the tiny woman said absently, as if she’d never even considered that. “Sorry, you must be really tired. Should I just show you to your room?”

“Yes, thank you,” Bella said, grateful to have such an easy out. She’d barely known Alice Cullen for an entire sixty seconds and Bella was already exhausted by the woman’s energy. 

“Come on then, Eddy! Best not to keep your sweetie-pie waiting!” Alice said as she skipped inside the house. 

“It is ever so lovely to finally be able to meet you,” Esme said to Bella once Alice had vanished down another hall. “I’m so very happy that Edward has found somebody who makes him happy.”

“Thank you,” Bella said with some hesitation. “I’m very glad to be here at last. Thank you for having me in your home, Mrs. Cullen.”

“Oh please, call me Esme.”

“And call me Carlisle,” Edward’s father said with an easy smile. 

“Beeeeeellllllllaaaaaa!” Alice called from the other end of the front hall. Because of the old, stone structure of the room, her call echoed and sounded much louder than it really was. 

“You’d better go,” Esme said to the younger woman. “Best not to keep Alice waiting. We’ll have plenty of time to get to know one another later. I’ll…” Esme looked over to her daughter and heaved a frustrated sigh. “I’ll have a talk with Alice. She can be a bit-”

“Too much?” Edward chimed in.

“I wouldn’t have put it like that, but yes,” Esme agreed with a slight nod of her head. “I’ll have a talk with her. You two probably have a lot of catching up to do, though.” She winked at them before she and Carlisle turned and went the opposite way. Edward put the hand that wasn’t holding Bella’s luggage on the small of Bella’s back and lead her over to where Alice waited for them. 

“I wanted to have you room with me, but I didn’t dare bring it up,” Edward whispered as they followed Alice up the grand, sweeping stairs. “However, I don’t think that anybody would so much as bat an eye if your bed looked exactly the same as it did the day you leave here as it did right now.” Bella flushed slightly as she thought about Edward’s family knowing what they would be up to during her stay with them. 

“Ta-da!” Alice exclaimed as she threw open the door to a room. It was decorated with an understated pink color scheme, and it was floral without being overly feminine. “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful,” Bella said honestly as she stepped inside. Edward dropped Bella’s carry-on onto the bed and parked her suitcase by the closet. 

“Well, I’ll let you get some rest now, but mark my words, Bells, I will be by in a bit to get you ready for dinner!” Alice said before she casually skipped out from the room.

“Wait, what?” Bella asked as she turned to Edward.

“She likes for us to dress up for dinner. You know, like on Downton?”

“I don’t know what that is…”

“It’s a period drama that’s insanely popular right now,” Edward explained. He stepped closer to Bella and held his arms out. She fell against him with an exhausted sigh. “I’ve missed you.”

“I… I missed you to.”


	13. Chapter 13

Bella’s eyes fluttered open upon the feel of Edward running his fingers through her hair. He offered her a small smile, which she was quick to return. “Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey,” he replied. He leaned in to gently kiss the tip of her nose. “When you said that you wanted to sleep, you really meant it.”

“I guess that I was more tired than I thought. Even though I got some sleep on the plane,” Bella said as she rolled over onto her back to stretch. 

“International flights are tough on your sleep schedule,” Edward said. “I would know— I’ve been on enough of them.” A sharp knock sounded at the door just then.

“Bella? Are you awake? I have so many dresses for you to try on!” Alice said.

Bella rolled onto her stomach and groaned loudly into her pillow. “It’s only 6; I thought that you said that dinner wasn’t until 8!”

“She likes to play dress-up,” Edward explained as he rubbed her back in a soothing way. 

“Couldn’t you just get her a Barbie or a mannequin?” Bella asked with annoyance. 

“She says that it’s not the same,” Edward said and then he laughed. “She probably gets some sort of deranged satisfaction over a struggling victim.” Bella gave Edward a look of absolute terror. “It’s not that bad. But if you really don’t want to do it, then I’ll go talk with my mum.”

“No, I could at least look at what she got for me, especially if she went to the trouble to buy me things,” Bella said with some hesitation. She sounded a lot more confident than she felt at the moment. 

“Buy? Bella, have I told you nothing about my sister?”

“She made me dresses?” Bella asked with complete surprise. “Then it would be downright rude of me to turn her away.”

“Careful, of you’ll never get rid of her,” he said as he got out of bed. He opened the door, but Alice didn’t immediately bounce into the room. 

“Come on, Eddy,” Alice said with a pout. “She said that she was tired, but you kept her up this entire time?”

“Despite what this looks like, she fell asleep,” he explained to his sister. “I just stayed with her because I missed her.” Edward left the room. 

“Then you must be a shitty lover if she fell asleep!” Alice yelled to Edward’s retreating back. His only response to that was to give Alice the finger. She rolled her eyes and stepped inside the room. “Come on! I have so many things for you to try on. Of course Eddy showed me pictures of you, which I used to get a rough estimate of your size, but I want to make sure that they all fit perfectly.” She pulled Bella from the room, down the hall, and into a room that had been converted into one part sewing room, one part dressing room. There were two clothing racks filled with garment bags by the changing screen, and both of them had a piece of paper stuck over them that said simply “For Bella”.

Bella’s eyes bugged out from her head once she saw the racks. “You made all of these for me? Alice, you didn’t have to. This is too much.”

“Nonsense! I love making clothes, and I love for the people that I love to be well-dressed. It would be silly of me to have you over and not clothe you!”

“I have clothes,” Bella protested meekly as Alice pulled a garment bag off the rack. 

“You have pieces of cloth that you drape over your body, but I will provide you with proper clothes,” Alice said as she handed Bella the bag. 

“Exactly how long do you think that I’m going to stay here? And when do you think that I’m going to wear something like this?” Bella asked as she pulled the cocktail dress out from the bag. 

“There will always be a reason,” Alice said with a slight nod. “And you can take them back with you. You know, for some of your other clients.” Bella went behind the screen to change. 

Bella imagined herself stalking a target down some disgusting alley while she wore the skimpy, navy blue sequin number, and then she burst out laughing. 

“Okay, okay, so from what Eddy told me, you don’t exactly go to the opera with most of your clients,” Alice said, having misinterpreted Bella’s laugh. “But you never know.”

Esme slipped into the room as Alice pulled Bella onto a small step and started to pin the dress. “I hope that you’re not holding Bella here against her will,” the older woman said with a slight laugh. 

“If Alice went to all of this trouble to make these dresses for me, it would be rude to not even look at them.”

“Well, you don’t have to try them all on,” Esme said. “Maybe just the dress for tonight. After all, didn’t you promise her a tour?”

“Yes, a tour would be lovely,” Bella said. She was eager to jump onto the subject of anything that didn’t involve a fitting of a dress that she’d honestly never wear outside of the sewing room. 

“Dresses are more important,” Alice said and gave both Bella and her mother a death glare. 

“The dress for tonight, Mary Alice,” Esme said, her voice low. A shiver of indirect fear ran up Bella’s spine. If Esme was in the business, she would be able to give Victoria a run for her money. 

“Fine,” Alice huffed. She tugged the dress over Bella’s head, careful not to dislodge any of the pins, and threw another garment bag at Bella. The dress inside was the kind of thing that she would have worn while working with Edward back in New York. It was magenta in the front and back, and had black on the sides that sort of made the pink look like an hourglass. Bella quickly pulled it on, not used to having two basic strangers stare at her mostly nude body. “The hem is a little long,” Alice said as she circled around Bella. 

“I like the length,” Bella said. It felt a little past the tips of her fingers when her arms were relaxed at her sides. 

“It’s too long!”

“The length is fine,” Esme said through clenched teeth.

“Fine,” Alice snapped as she gathered some overly-loose material around Bella’s waist. After a few minutes, Alice pulled the dress off, too. “Get dressed, since mum is clearly so eager to get you away from my oh-so-evil clutches.” Bella didn’t need to be told twice and threw her clothes back on. 

“I actually have more motives in mind besides trying to save you from a two hour dress fitting,” Esme said to Bella once they were some distance from Alice’s work room. “I’m really happy that Edward’s found somebody who makes him happy. I’ve honestly never seen him this way before. He’s dated before, of course. You must have at least read in the tabloids about his very public relationship with Tanya Denali?”

“Edward told me more about his relationship with her than People Magazine ever did,” Bella said. “So I suppose that I understand what you’re getting at right now.”

“Good, because I hate having to ease gently into these kind of awkward conversations,” Esme said lightly, although Bella sensed an underlying darkness to her words. “I know that getting into a long-distance relationship like this must have been a giant gamble for both of you.”

They walked in silence for a second before Bella realized that the older woman was expecting a reply to this. “It’s not exactly okay for tour agents to sleep with our clients,” she started slowly. “I mean, what would that say about our business?” Esme gave a low hum of agreement. “I don’t know how much Edward said about my past to you, but there were a lot of reasons why I was exceptionally apprehensive about even starting up a relationship with him.”

“He never mentioned this,” Esme said. “He only said that the two of you had fallen madly in love.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it love, exactly,” Bella said with some hesitation as she laced her fingers together in front of her. “We were only together for a month, and spent the past month apart. That isn’t love. That isn’t even enough time to say that you love somebody. And if somebody says otherwise on the subject, then I’m going to say that their relationship can’t possibly be healthy.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Bella.”

“Actually, can you help me to clear the air about something Edward said to me about Tanya?”

“I’m not quite sure how much help that I’ll be, but you can certainly ask.”

“He didn’t really tell me all that much about Tanya, but the things that he said gave me the impression that you wanted for them to be together.”

Esme heaved a heavy sigh and seemed to consider her words greatly before she answered. “We’ve known Tanya and her sisters for a very long time,” she started after a moment. “When Edward was a child, he used to have a little puppy crush on her. Carlisle and I thought that it was cute. And then they were older and both single at the same time. I think: ‘Why not?’ The worst case scenario that I can imagine in my mind is that they won’t get along and break up after a while. But, I never imagined that Edward’s fame would get to her head like that. I’ve honestly never seen her like that, and I’m now sorry that I pushed them like I did.”

“Do you think that they would have been okay if Edward wasn’t famous? If they’d gotten together before he got famous? Or if he’d never become famous at all?”

“Judging by what happened between them, their relationship would have imploded from the get-go. If it hadn’t been Edward’s fame, it would have been something else altogether.”

Bella nodded with understanding, but felt more confused about Tanya than before. Edward had never given her any details about his ex-girlfriend, only that she hadn’t been good for him. What exactly had happened between the two of them? She wished that she’d followed the break-up when it had been in the public eye. 

 

* * *

“Oakenwall is so different from New York, isn’t it?” Edward asked as he and Bella walked through the small town the next afternoon. 

“All of those articles about you gave me the impression that you lived in London. And that wasn’t some comment from some stupid American who points to Ireland and eagerly calls it London.”

“Maybe that was the impression that I wanted to give to the interviewers? I mean, you saw what it was like when I was in New York. Every couple of feet, we’d be stopped by some of my fans. And forget trying to go for a stroll through Central Park.”

Bella scowled with the rather sour memory of being bombarded by the paparazzi that afternoon. “But people don’t bother you here?”

“This is a small-enough town. Everybody knows everybody here. And if people don’t know you yet, then we will,” he said with a cheeky grin.

“This seems like a nice place, but not the kind of place where you’d come to have a rave,” Bella said after a moment of hesitation. 

“I keep a flat in London. I crash there from time to time. At first, I wanted to take you there, but I thought that maybe it might make you uncomfortable,” he explained. Bella held her index finger and thumb a few millimeters apart. “Plus, you got to meet my family. That dress looks amazing on you, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Bella said as she smoothed down the skirt of the demure, pink sun-dress that Alice had laid out for her that morning. “I was a little nervous yesterday when she gave me this stupid Jessica Rabbit-type dress. But, she made a lot of other stuff, and not just things that I would never wear.”

“She is not without occasion.”

“I’m still wondering where she expected me to wear something like that, though,” Bella said with annoyance. 

“You could wear it for me,” Edward said with all seriousness. 

Bella flushed. “I would feel so ridiculous, though,” she muttered. Edward stopped walking and Bella was forced to stop, too, or else let go of Edward’s hand. She stood and glared down at the sidewalk as if it had personally offended her. 

“Hey,” Edward said and turned her to face him. He gently tipped her chin up with his index finger. “You would look beautiful and I’m not just saying that out of brotherly devotion to Alice.” He leaned over to kiss her.

They pulled apart a second later when somebody across the street gave a loud wolf whistle. Both of them flushed with embarrassment as a dark-haired man jogged across the street and over to them. “Where did you pick this little cutie up from?” he asked Edward.

“New York.”

“Ooh, this is the girl that the media was all in a frenzy about,” he said. “Never actually thought that I’d see you in Oakenwall, though. Felix.” He held his hand out.

“Bella.” She shook Felix’s hand. 

“A pretty name for a pretty lady. Listen, Bella, if you ever start to wonder what it would be like to be with a real man…” He let his comment hang in the air and waggled his eyebrows at Bella before Edward punched him in the arm. “Ow! I was joking!” he was quick to protest as he rubbed his injured arm. 

“Then don’t make it sound like a legitimate offer!” Edward practically growled at the other man. Felix was quick to hold up his hands in a gesture of surrender. 

“We need to catch up soon; it’s been too long,” Felix said after a moment.

“Bella’s going to be here through the end of the month,” Edward explained. “But I know that Alice wants to do things with her, and I think that my parents might want to do something, too. So I’ll probably have a free afternoon or two. I’ll call you.”

“Cool, cool. Watch out for his sister, because she’s certifiable,” Felix said to Bella. 

“I know,” Bella said with annoyance. 

“Ooh, I should have recognized Alice’s work,” he said as he gestured to Bella’s dress. “Well, I won’t keep you, then.” He started to walk away. “It was nice meeting you, Bella. And I’ll do nothing but sit by the phone until you call, Ed!” They watched Felix until he vanished inside a shop before they turned around and continued along their walk. 

“We’re not friends,” Edward said. “Not really.”

“He seemed certain that you were going to call him.”

“We just grew up together, that’s all. It’s pretty much the only reason why we even talk to one another. Two people who live in a small town who grew up together… People would wonder why we weren’t friendly with one another when we didn’t exactly have any reason not to.”

Edward chatted aimlessly about the different shops and buildings that they passed in the town until they reached the outskirts of the town, on the opposite side that Oakenwall Manor was in. As they walked over to the final building, a red mini cooper appeared over the horizon, headed towards the town. It zoomed past Edward and Bella, but a second later, it stopped and reversed until it was parallel to where the two of them stood. 

“Bella?” a woman in the driver’s seat asked. “Oh my god, it is you! Bella Swan!”

“Uh… Do I know you?” Bella said with some hesitation. 

“It’s me, Angela Webber! Remember, we went to high school together?”

“Oh gosh, I didn’t recognize you!” Bella said with a bright smile. 

“I can’t even believe that I would run into you, of all people, on my road trip across Europe!” Angela gushed. “It’s been so very long! How have you been?”

“I’ve been great, thanks. And you? A road trip across Europe, really?” Bella said as they walked a couple of steps away from where Edward stood. 

Angela put a friendly arm around Bella’s shoulders and leaned in like she was going to say some scandalous secret. “Tonight. Wait until he’s asleep. I will leave that car behind the bakery, doors unlocked, keys in the ignition.” 

Bella didn’t even bat an eyelash at this. Both of them burst out laughing, although it was the last thing that Bella felt like doing at the moment. She felt like she was going to be sick. 

“Nice seeing you again, Bella!” Angela said as she got back into her car and drove away.

“Fancy meeting your old friend in Oakenwall,” Edward said casually as they started back into the town. 

 

* * *

Waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike was the absolute worst part about doing any job. Bella had her go-bag stashed under the bed in Edward’s room, and she’d put her stiletto under her pillow while Edward had been in the bathroom. She felt naked without her gloves, but knew that the Cullens would know at once who had killed Edward when they woke up to find him dead, and her gone. There wouldn’t be any point to trying to hide it. 

In the distance, Bella heard the antique grandfather clock in the library chime midnight, and she slowly inched her hand under her pillow. The handle of the knife was ice-cold against her sweating palm. The weight of the knife was usually a great reassurance to her, but not tonight. Tonight, it felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. 

She forced herself to look at Edward’s sleeping figure. His breath came out in a slow and steady pattern— he was deep asleep right now. The thought that he had willingly invited a highly trained assassin into his bed had probably never once crossed his mind. And it likely never would. 

Bella held the knife up over Edward, ready to strike.

Her hand shook.

She gripped the knife with both hands, but it did little to still the shaking blade. 

She knew that hesitation was the worst thing when killing somebody. Hesitate for just one second, and you start to have doubts. 

Those doubts raced through Bella’s mind right now.

She didn’t want to think about it. 

She didn’t want to think about killing Edward Cullen. 

She plunged the knife into him.

He gasped as he awoke.

She’d stabbed him in the stomach instead of through the chest. 

Edward let out a strangled cry, tried to push Bella away, but was unable due to his injury. 

The door to the room burst open and Jasper, along with several other members of the security team, ran into the room. Tears clouded Bella’s vision and made it hard for her to see as Jasper wrestled her to the ground.

“Knock her out,” a cool voice said. Something heavy struck the back of Bella’s head and her world went black. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a second to leave a kudo on this if you're enjoying the story.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some rather mild torture with a cattle prod in this chapter. I tried to keep the descriptions of it to a minimum as even I have my limits, but it's still there.

Bella was jerked out of her unconscious state as a bucket of ice-cold water was thrown over her. She gasped, partly from pain, partly from cold. Her hands were taped behind her back and her legs were taped to the legs of the chair that she sat on. She was a little surprised that nobody had put a gag into her mouth or something over her eyes. 

“Oh good, you’re awake,” a soft voice said from the other side of the room. Bella looked up, her vision still hazy. A figure stood in an open doorway, and was backlit so that Bella could only see her silhouette. As Bella started to come to her senses, she realized that it was Esme. Esme, the sweet and motherly older woman, who’d welcomed Bella into her home with open arms, was now holding Bella hostage in her basement. 

Granted, Bella had been hired to kill her son and had stabbed him in the stomach. It was hard to blame the woman, but this seemed a bit excessive. 

Esme walked calmly over to Bella; her movements reminded Bella of a cat stalking its prey. “Oh, that’s going to leave a nasty bruise later,” Esme said as she gently tipped Bella’s face towards the light. “I’m afraid that Jasper got a little too heavy-handed with you when he knocked you out. I’m so sorry about that.” It was like Esme was talking about spilling something onto Bella’s dress. Esme ran her hand down Bella’s cheek in a very tender way before she roughly slapped her. Bella saw star, even though the older woman hadn’t hit her all that hard; she was still slightly groggy from being knocked out earlier. “Please bear in mind that the only reason why you are still alive is because Edward is still alive.”

Bella’s heart hammered in her chest. She wasn’t quite certain how she should feel about this news— she’d failed her job and he was still alive.

Still alive. Still alive. The words hammered around in her head to the tempo of her heartbeat. 

Jasper came into the room just then with a chair, which he put down a few feet in front of where Bella was taped to the chair. Esme sat gingerly, adjusted her skirt, picked a piece of lint off from her shoulder, delicately crossed her legs, and folded her laced fingers on top of her knee. “Bella,” she started with a small smile. “My dear, I’m going to ask you some very simple questions. It is in your best interest to answer them to the best of your ability. If you lie to me, or if I should have any reason to think that you’re lying to me… Well then. You aren’t going to like what’ll happen to you should you think to do that.”

Bella steeled her gaze. It had been a long time since she underwent her torture resistance training with Victoria, but spending days in a basement, being whipped, kicked, punched, starved, and isolated for four months was not something that anybody would likely forget. 

“First things first, what is your real name?” Esme asked. A muscle in Bella’s jaw twitched. Behind her, she heard a hum of electricity. “Do you hear that sound, Bella? It’s a cattle prod. It doesn’t have enough juice in it to actually kill a person, but trust me when I say that being shocked over and over tends to get a bit… tiresome after a while. If you don’t answer, then Jasper is more than willing to shock you. What is your real name?” The only sound in the room was from the cattle prod. “Shock her. Give her a taste of what’s to come if she doesn’t start to talk soon.” 

Jasper jabbed the prod into Bella’s lower back, in the spaces between the slats on the back of the chair. Bella clenched her jaw harder to avoid making a sound. 

“Well, I will say one thing: Whoever you are, you are very well trained. It takes months for me to get my people to be able to resist pain like that. Any person off the street… they get zapped and start screaming almost at once,” Esme went on. “Oh don’t give me that look. It’s not like I snatch people off the streets and start torturing them. I mean, after all, I’m not a cruel person. There is a method to my madness, after all. What is your name?”

 

* * *

After what must have been several hours, Bella’s muscles were so tired, her back sore, her shoulders ached from the awkward position that her hands were taped in, and her head throbbed. 

“Well well, whoever you are, you were clearly very highly trained,” Esme said. “I think that we’ll take a little break now, since clearly, this is going nowhere fast.” She got up and left the room. Jasper was quick to pick up the chair and carried it out from the room. A minute later, a couple of other men came into the room and started to set up a screen and a projector. 

Bella took the brief reprise from her torture to try and assess the situation. Although her legs were very securely taped to the legs of the chair, her hands were only taped to each other behind her back. She tried to twist her hands around to pick at the duct tape, but it would probably take a while to pick at the tape enough to free her hands. 

Next, she looked around the room without moving her head. It was a single room made out of concrete. No windows, and only the one door. She’d have to incapacitate any number of guards, as well as Esme herself if she did somehow manage to get free. Things were not looking good for her right now. 

Bella’s focus turned inward next. Just who exactly was Esme? She’d said very little during the past couple of hours, but Bella sensed that there was something very dark within her. Maybe this was the reason why somebody had hired a hit on Edward— to get back at Esme for some reason. It made a little bit of sense, but not much.

The entire family had just seemed so completely normal and kind. And Bella had spent so much time with Edward! If he was involved in some dark underground, Bella liked to think that she would have caught onto that fact before now. Not to mention the strange fact of his fame. If he really was in some crime family, being famous would only make it harder for the secret to be kept, and for Edward to do whatever dirty work that he did. 

Esme strolled back into the room. “Ah, sorry about keeping you waiting, honey,” she apologized as she stood by the projector. “I called Carlisle and he told me that Edward is out of surgery now. They’ve stabilized him, but it’s touch and go. And let me remind you of our initial little… well, I call it an agreement, but you didn’t exactly agree to anything. But if Edward dies, then you die, too.”

Esme fired up the projector, which threw up a bright light onto the screen. “Since you clearly don’t want to talk to me and since you were so resistant to the torture, I suppose that a little bit of show and tell is in order now.” Esme clicked the projector onto the first slide, which was a birth certificate. Bella saw her own name and birth day written in, as well as the names of her parents. “It was easy enough to track this down. But, it only made me wonder: exactly how many Isabella Swans are there? However, it was a lot easier to track down Renee and Charlie Swan, seeing as how they’re dead.” She looked over to Bella. “But I assume by the look on your face, that you’re very much aware of that fact. I can read you like a book, Bella.”

Next slide. A newspaper article about the car accident that had killed her parents. There was a sentence at the at the end of the article that was highlighted, but the article itself was too small to read comfortably. The next slide was a close-up of the highlighted portion, which said “Their only child, an eleven year old daughter, will be looked after by Renee’s younger brother.” “With Renee’s death record, it was easy enough to find out who her parents were, as well as who her brother was. And, wouldn’t you know it? It was very easy to find him, too. You seem to have left a peculiar, bloody trail behind you my dear.”

A vein pulsed in the side of Bella’s jaw as uncontrollable rage boiled within her. “Oh my. I seem to have struck a nerve with dear Uncle Michael, haven’t I?” Esme asked. “I do wish that I had been able to find more information on him, but, on the record, he lead such an ordinary— albeit short— life. It is such a pity that census data and death records give no indication of a person’s hobbies. Especially not the kind that they never tell their best friends about.”

The next slide was a crime scene photo of the inside of Mike’s house. It was an image that was already burned into Bella’s mind— no matter what happened in her life, she’d never be able to forget that day. Mike lay in a pool of blood on top of the overturned bookcase in the front hall. There were bloody glove prints on the wall, and a couple of footprints that lead away from where Mike lay. The only thing that was different from Bella’s memory and the photo were the yellow police number triangles set along certain points, like by the bloody footprints. 

“This was no hired hit; this was a crime of passion. Look at that— hand prints and footprints, and and overturned bookcase. I’m honestly very surprised that whoever was responsible for this crime was never caught, what with leaving so many clues all over the place. It’s sad that a case like this went so cold so fast,” Esme said gently. A picture of the missing person’s poster for Bella after she’d run away. “And of course, there’s still the one question on everybody’s mind: What happened to young Isabella Swan? Orphaned at such a young age, her only living relative found brutally murdered in his home. After she went missing, the police suspected Michael had something to do with it. But after he was found dead, well, they began to look for a grave instead. After three months after Michael’s death, there were no leads on either case. More important cases came to light, and although I’m certain that some people never stopped looking for young Bella, the case eventually went cold.”

Next slide. This one was a picture of a crowded city sidewalk. Somebody had circled two figures in the center with red; Bella recognized both herself and Victoria. It was when Bella had accepted the job to kill Edward. “Of course, I think that I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. First off, this lady. The only thing that anybody knows about her is that her name is Victoria. She runs a criminal empire in New York. But, of course, you know all about this, don’t you? After all, you appear to be very chummy with her in this picture, don’t you? But, sweetie, I don’t judge. I have some… less than savory friends, myself, after all.

“And it took a lot of digging on my part. Oh, I’m certain that there are probably some people in your old hometown who would love to hear that Bella Swan is very much alive and well— for the most part, at any rate— but I was a little bit more worried about my son. For you see, I know that you’d been hired out to kill him.”

“You knew?” Bella rasped out. “You knew this entire time and you did absolutely nothing to stop the events from happening?”

“If that’s all that it took to get you to talk, then I should have started with the show and tell earlier,” Esme said simply. 

“Don’t be so fucking proud of yourself— your shit parenting has brought Edward to this point,” Bella spat. 

“Edward is an adult-”

“But you knew exactly who I was and why I was here and yet, you did fucking nothing to stop it!” Bella screamed. Esme stalked over to where Bella was bound and slapped her roughly. Bella hung her head and her hair fell down around her face. “Face it, Esme. You’re nothing but a shit parent who wanted for her son to die.” This earned her another slap.

“Do not dare presume that you know anything about me or my family.”

“All I know is that you let a known assassin walk into your home, into your son’s bed, and you fucking did nothing to stop it.”

“Edward knew very well who you were?”

“What?” Now that came as a surprise. 

“I mean, sure, I knew that there was a hit out on my son, but he’s the one who came back to tell me the name of the agent who’d met him at the airport,” Esme went on. Bella looked sharply to Esme. 

Things began to click into place. The strange encounter that Edward had his first night in New York. How he went to a club after hours and pulled something off from under the table. Bella had only determined that it was most likely a USB stick, but had never been anywhere close enough to determine what had been on it. 

And it also explained why Edward was so keen on getting close to her. It was just about as much his job as it had been hers. 

But wait, something was not right. “If you didn’t know who’d been contracted out to kill Edward, then why do you have a picture of Victoria and me before I’d even met Edward?”

“Truthfully, I’ve had a tail on Vicky for such a long time now,” Esme said with some annoyance. “After all, she is my New York rival. Most of the time, she’s up to some boring, American nonsense. Good work with that guy who killed his family and walked away on a technicality, by the way.”

“T-thank you,” Bella stammered out. She couldn’t believe that she was taped to a chair and calmly talking about one of her previous jobs like it was nothing. And with somebody who was apparently the leader of another criminal guild, no less. 

“Arg, what the fuck?” Esme growled out as she ran a hand through her hair. Apparently, she was just as disturbed over their rather civil conversation as Bella was. “I had more to show you, but show and tell is over now. You’d better keep praying that Edward makes it, or else your life will be over, too.” She stormed out from the room and roughly slammed the door behind her.

The projector was still on, with the image of Bella and Victoria on the crowded, New York street. 

 

* * *

It was easy to loose track of time. Bella dozed a bit, but it seemed as if every time she managed to fall into a deeper sleep, somebody would come barging into the room. Sometimes they had some food, but usually not. And even when they did bring food, it wasn’t much; only a stale piece of bread or some hard cheese. 

Every time the door opened, Bella would flinch, certain that they had come with the news that Edward hadn’t made it. But, the longer that Bella remained Esme’s prisoner, the more sure Bella was that Edward was going to be okay. 

All of the time left Bella to think about the entire situation. She had no idea why Esme had urged her son to get close to the woman that both knew had been hired to kill him. Although, now that she had some information about Esme— the real Esme, and not the gentle housewife Esme— she could understand why somebody would want Edward dead. Not to rid the world of yet another faux celebrity with little actual talent or claim to fame, but rather, as a message to Esme. 

But it baffled Bella that they’d both known and had chosen instead to continue on as if nothing had happened. Edward would have never been stabbed if Esme had refused Bella into her home or if Edward had simply kept her at arms length. 

In between moments of sleep, little bubbles of thought would drift to the surface. Thoughts that Bella did everything that she could to not think about while she was more alert. She wondered about Edward’s health at that particular moment. About why he’d pretended to be so enamored with her. Hadn’t he been afraid for his life? If he’d had the information about her for most of his stay in New York, surely he must have worried. 

Every time that Bella caught herself thinking about that, she’d mentally shake her head and think about other things. The different stages of David Bowie. Bill Murray movies. The dumb things that she’d had to do for various jobs over the years. What Rosalie and Jacob might be doing in that specific moment.

Surely one of them missed her. She hoped that they would mourn her if she were to die in Oakenwall. 

She didn’t want to think about that, either. 

The door opened, and Bella flinched as usual. 

“My dear, sorry to have kept you waiting for so long,” Esme said from the doorway as Jasper stalked over to her. Bella closed her eyes and prayed that her death would be painless. She felt a slight tug on her wrists and a second later, he pulled the tape off from her wrists. He moved to the front and started to cut off the tape that bound her legs. 

“What?” Bella asked as a second figure appeared in the doorway next to Esme. Bella would have recognized that silhouette anywhere. Victoria. 

“Come on, you disgusting cunt,” Victoria hissed as Jasper yanked Bella to her feet. Bella stumbled a few steps, since she’d been taped to the chair for god-knows how long. “I didn’t come all of this way to get you just for you to sit around and waste my time. Let’s go before Mrs. Cullen changes her mind.” 


	15. Chapter 15

“I cannot believe this! You’ve screwed up pretty badly in the past before, but this…” Victoria gave a bitter laugh. “This one takes the motherfucking cake!” Bella could only just hang her head in complete shame. Her mentor had been on a rant ever since they’d arrived at the tiny apartment in Chicago over an hour ago. “I risked my own fucking life for you, you know. I can’t go into England at all because of the Blood Tears. If Esme herself hadn’t called me and promised me that I’d be safe while I got you, I wouldn’t have even bothered. You…”

Victoria’s nostrils flared out in her rage. She stormed over to Bella and roughly tipped the younger girl’s head back so that Bella was forced to look into her mentor’s eyes. “You know what you remind me of, Bella?”

“What?” Bella asked, her voice but a timid whisper.

“You remind me of Nimue, who foolishly fell in love with the man that she was tasked to kill,” Victoria started, her voice so low that it sent shivers of fear up Bella’s spine. “But at least Nimue had the common decency to, not only to kill The Merlin, but to also kill herself once he was dead. You couldn’t even mange one of those things!”

Bella flinched as if Victoria had slapped her, although she wished that she had been slapped. The words hurt worse than the cattle prod or anything that Victoria had ever done to her before. 

She’d fucked up. She knew that she’d fucked up, and she didn’t need any more reminders of her massive failure. 

Victoria just kept glaring at Bella. “Well?” she barked after about a minute. “Tell me that I’m wrong. Tell me that you didn’t fall in love with your assignment!”

Bella opened her mouth, but couldn’t find the words. She couldn’t say that love had saved Edward that night, but she couldn’t deny it, either.

Victoria threw her hands up in a gesture of defeat. “I’m fucking done with you right now, Bella,” she growled as she stalked over to the door. “There’s bleach, dye, and some scissors in the bathroom. I’ll have somebody deliver you some things to help you get settled in here.” And then she was gone. 

 

* * *

Months passed. Summer gave way to fall, which gave way to winter. Bella felt empty and restless. She bought a record player and several of David Bowie’s albums. She had them all back in New York, but she wasn’t sure that she’d ever be able to go back there again. She sat in the impersonal apartment that Victoria had set up for her and let David Bowie’s pain consume her instead of her own. 

“I know what you mean, Mr. Jones,” Bella said over a glass of Bourbon one afternoon. “I don’t know if it was love or the job. If only I could blame cocaine on all of my problems.” She threw back the last of the liquor and then realized that she’d finished off the bottle. 

She hadn’t drunk all that much before. Every so often, after a particularly rough case, Rosalie would come home with a bottle of wine, and they’d drink it over some microwave meals and bad TV. But, Bella had not heard from Victoria since she’d stormed out from the apartment, all of those months ago. And even though she was given enough money in order to not completely starve to death, she also hadn’t received any jobs, either. Never in her life had Bella ever felt so low. 

Bella got up out from her chair and went to find the Low album in question. She’d just pulled it out from the old milk crate where she kept them when somebody knocked on her door. She didn’t have many friends, and kept pretending like she pushed away anybody who got too close because she was going to go back to New York soon. But, the longer she remained in Chicago, the more certain that she was that this was going to turn into a permanent thing.

Bella’s elderly neighbor who was nearly 90 was on the other side of the door. “Margret, dear,” Mrs. Martin started. She had real bad Alzheimer's and sometimes confused Bella with her daughter, Margret, who’d died nearly 20 years ago. “I’m running really low on a lo of things and I was wondering if you could run down to the store for me real quick.”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Martin,” Bella said. She couldn’t possibly say no to the old lady, who was confused and exceptionally harmless in her old age and mental state. “I have to run to the store anyway, so now is as good of a time as any.” Bella reached for her coat while Mrs. Martin shuffled back to her apartment for the grocery list and money to give to Bella.

The temperature was around 4 degrees Fahrenheit, but Bella relished the walk to the store around the corner. It gave her ample opportunity to sober up. She filled the basket with the things on Mrs. Martin’s list before she went back to the alcohol isle. In order to get there, she had to walk across the front of the store, where they had the magazines on display, in the hopes that somebody would want to buy them as an impulse. She hadn’t exactly looked at them when she’d come in, because she’d been so focused on getting the items for Mrs. Martin. But now…

Edward’s face stared back at her on the cover of a dozen different copies of People Magazine that were on display. He wasn’t smiling, and he looked like he hadn’t sleep for a week… even with make-up and photoshop to make him look better. 

All thoughts of buying more liquor quickly left her mind. Almost against her will, Bella found herself walking towards the register. She unloaded the basket, and, once it was empty, she absently picked up a copy of People and threw it onto the counter, too. After she’d paid, she hurried from the store and made it around the corner before she pulled the magazine out from the bag. 

“Edward Cullen,” the byline read. “His first interview since he was hospitalized. His own words about what lead to him needing extensive surgery and a month recovering in the hospital.”

Bella ran her hand longingly down his picture, but it just made her feel stupid. There was no way that he’d ever want to talk to her again, let alone see her. She’d ruined whatever slim chance at a normal relationship that they’d had. She quickly stuffed the magazine into the bag again and hurried back home. After she put the groceries away for Mrs. Martin, Bella went to her own apartment and looked at the magazine again. 

She flipped to the article. It was hard for her to read— her vision kept blurring. Edward said that he’d been visiting his parents. They were doing some renovations, and while going for a midnight walk, Edward had tripped and fallen onto some rebarb. Bella knew that it must have taken a lot of quick thinking to sell this story, but with the money and influence that the family had, it wouldn’t have taken much for anybody involved to think that this was the only truth. Just a horrible accident, nothing more. 

With an angry yell, Bella threw the magazine across the room and then burst into tears. 

 

* * *

Although winter didn’t want to give up its hold on the city, it eventually gave way to spring. The building super found Bella a job answering phones for a call center for some insurance company. It was demeaning work, and Bella was screamed at by clients, co-workers, and her bosses alike. 

She wanted nothing more than to kill them all, but had come to terms with the simple fact that her life as an assassin was completely over. She hadn’t heard from Victoria since her mentor had brought her to Chicago, and the money had stopped coming after Bella had started at the insurance company. 

Bella heaved a depressed sigh as she walked up the short steps to the door of her apartment building after a rather obnoxious day at work. She wanted nothing more than to pull on her lounge pants, put on some David Bowie, open a bottle of wine, and think of literally anything but today. 

As she rounded the final landing to get onto her floor, laughter trickled down from her floor. She heard a low but deep voice talking, and then Mrs. Martin saying something in response. There were a couple of men who lived in the apartment building, but Bella had never seen them interacting with their oldest neighbor before. With curiosity, Bella walked the final few steps, turned the corner, and then gasped with a mixture of horror and surprise. 

Mrs. Martin sat on the built-in seat on her walker while Edward stood and talked to her. At Bella’s gasp, he turned his attention behind him and offered Bella a small but sad smile. “Bella,” he said simply.

“Margret, you should have told me that you had a boyfriend!” Mrs. Martin said. 

“W-what are you doing here?” Bella somehow managed to get out. 

“You wouldn’t believe how long that I’ve been looking for you,” Edward said. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. I wasn’t even sure if this was the right place. I tried to talk with some of your neighbors, but they said that they’d never heard of you before. But when I showed them a picture, they said that you might be their neighbor, but with different hair. I couldn’t possibly imagine it…” Edward trailed off and he took in Bella’s hair, which was now a little past her chin and still bottle-blonde. “But Mrs. Martin was insistent that you were her daughter.”

“She’s confused,” Bella explained.

“Yes, I understand that,” Edward said quickly. “Thank you very much for keeping me company while I waited for… um… Margret to get back.”

“Oh, no problem, honey. Let me know how the egg hunt goes,” Mrs. Martin said as she shuffled back into her apartment. Bella turned to unlock the door to her apartment. 

“Why are you here?”

“I’ve been looking for you. Ever since… Well I asked for you when I woke up in the hospital, but my mum said that you’d gone back home already. I… I didn’t want to even admit it to myself, but I really missed you.”

“I fucking stabbed you,” Bella said flatly. “If you were smart, then you should have forgotten all about me. Married some nice girl in Oakenwall and had a bunch of babies or something.”

“But I’m clearly not smart!” Edward hissed. Bella paused, the door unlocked but not opened. “Because you fucking stabbed me, and the only thing that I wanted was for you to come into my hospital room with like… I don’t know, some stupid gift-shop flowers or something.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. 

Bella looked around the hall. It was getting to be 5 PM already, and even though none of the other people who lived on this floor were home yet, they would be soon. She opened the door and stepped inside. “You’d better come in, then,” she said. Edward quickly followed her in. He looked over the tiny apartment, which still felt as impersonal as the day that Bella had first arrived. There were a couple of dishes stacked in the sink, the record player sat on the side table by the window, and under it sat the milk crate with the records. But other than that, there wasn’t anything of Bella’s that lay out in the open. 

Bella dropped her purse and keys on the kitchen counter, and then stood with her back to Edward, because she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. “Bella, please-” Edward started after a moment of silence.

“Why did you come here, Edward?” Bella snapped. She still didn’t turn to look at him. 

“I… I needed answers. I needed to know why.”

“You know why!” Bella gasped. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the counter. “Esme told me. After I’d stabbed you. Did she tell you about how she kept me in a room in the basement at Oakenwall Manor for three days? I was fucking taped to a chair, and Jasper took such pleasure in pushing a cattle prod into my back when I refused to answer your mother’s questions!”

“I know,” Edward said with resignation. “She came to see me in the hospital. I guess that it wasn’t long after you’d left. She said that Victoria had come and taken you. That I wouldn’t have to see you again.”

“I just don’t understand how you could just play with your life like that!” Bella exclaimed as she spun around to face Edward. “You knew that I was an assassin from the moment that you met me, and you knew that at any time, I could kill you! But you kept urging me closer and closer!”

“Mum insisted that there was no way that I would die while I was I New York,” Edward explained. “Killing me was to send a message to her. And what point would it be if I wasn’t killed under her roof? If I’d died in New York… Well, people get killed in random muggings and shoot-outs all of the time. And if you killed me when we first met, who’s to say that I wasn’t some innocent victim of a mugging gone wrong?” Bella pressed her lips together; it was hard to argue with that logic. Edward took a step forward. He reached out, but stopped his hand just short of touching her. “Bella…”

“Don’t,” Bella said as she moved away from him. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“I needed to come. I… A therapist might suggest that I need closure, but the truth was that I was really hurt that you just left like that.”

“It’s not like I wanted to be dragged away! If Esme hadn’t hammered the facts of the entire situation down for me, Victoria sure as hell did when she showed up.”

A small flicker of hope lit up Edward’s eyes. “So if my mom hadn’t gotten between us, you think that you-”

“Stop,” Bella hissed. “I would have fled the country and not looked back! It’s what I was trained to do, after all!” But not even Bella believed the words coming from her mouth at the moment. 

They both lapsed into an awkward silence. Somebody laughed somewhere downstairs and on that floor, somebody roughly slammed a door shut. “You don’t really mean that,” Edward said after a moment.

“We flew from Heathrow straight to O’Hare,” Bella started. “And from the airport, we came straight to this apartment. Victoria chewed me out for the longest time. But, right before she left, you wanna know what she said to me?”

“What?”

“She compared me to Nimue.”

“Who?” Edward asked with some confusion.

“In the early 90’s, a lady wrote a book series of King Arthur as told from the point of view of the women who stood by his side. The series was called The Mists of Avalon. I know that there are a lot of different variations on literally every little detail, but in this one, Gwenhwyfar had a cousin who was also her hand-maiden. Her name was Elaine. She was so madly in love with Lancelot that she went to Morgaine and asked for the priestess to cast a spell over Lancelot to make him fall in love with Elaine. Morgaine agreed, but only under the promise that Moragine would take their first-born daughter to Avalon to be trained as a priestess. And that daughter was Nimue.”

“I’m sorry, this is all very interesting, but do you have a point?” Edward interrupted her. 

“I’m getting to it, okay? You have to understand the circumstances of Nimue’s situation first in order to understand what she did,” Bella snapped. “At the same time that Nimue finally became a priestess of Avalon, the Merlin was a man named Kevin. He was grossly disfigured, but people respected him because he was a very talented bard.”

“Wait a second, I thought that Merlin was his name. Why is his name Kevin?”

“Merlin is a job title. It’s like the equivalent of the Pope,” Bella said with an annoyed sigh. “Will you please just let me finish?”

“Okay, sorry,” Edward said.

“But at the time that Nimue became a full priestess, Kevin had already started to betray Avalon. At the time that King Arthur was on the throne, England was slowly starting to change from what we now call a pagan-run state into a Christian-run one. There was a lot of political motivation going on about this, and it’s too much to get into right now. But basically, Kevin started to advise Arthur and started to talk about Jesus and Christianity. To put it into terms that other people might understand, this would be like if The Pope suddenly started only attending worship at a Mosque.” Edward nodded with understanding. “Morgaine told Nimue that she was to get close to Kevin and kill him for his betrayal. Since Kevin had spent most of his time in Arthur’s court, he didn’t know the girl. Nimue tried to put a spell over Kevin, but it was too strong and she fell in love with him as he did with her. Both of them returned to Avalon, where they were both found dead. Nimue finished her task of killing Kevin, but in the end, she couldn’t deal with the grief and killed herself after she’d killed him.”

Edward was silent for a long time. Bella lowered her eyes, unable to look at him any longer. “I… I see,” Edward said. “She’s perfectly entitled to her opinion, but I think that she’s wrong.”

“No, she’s completely right. I am Nimue. I should have killed you, and then myself. But I couldn’t do either. I’m too much of a coward.”

“Don’t say that. You are a very brave person for saying ‘fuck you’ to the system, as well as to say it again. You needed to live, because our story wasn’t over yet.”

“Our story ended the moment that I stabbed you,” Bella said simply.

“Not to me it isn’t. And on some level, I think that you think that as well,” Edward said quickly. This took Bella by surprise a bit. She didn’t want to admit, not even to herself, that he was right.

“Almost every word out of my mouth was a complete lie!” she spat at him.

“No, that isn’t true. My mother dug into your background. She found information about your parents, about how they died in a car accident when you were little, and then you went to go live with your mum’s younger brother, Mike. Bella, I might have talked my way out of my mum’s line of work, but even I know that, if you were hired to sleep with me, you would have done it. And you did try. I saw it the day or two before I left New York. You were so afraid, like a wounded animal.” Bella lowered her eyes as tears started to fill them. Edward took a tentative step closer to her, and then another. They were so close, and yet, still so far apart. “No matter how good of an actor that you might be, nobody can ever fake that level of complete panic and fright in a situation like that.”

“Why did you come here?” Bella choked out as the first tears fell from her eyes.

“I came because we have unfinished business.”

“If you were smart, you would have stayed far away from me.”

“You said that already.” Edward gently cupped Bella’s cheeks and rubbed her tears away with his thumbs. “If you feel that we won’t be able to move forward from where we last left off, then might I suggest a clean slate?”

“What?” 

“A clean slate. We’ll pretend like we don’t know one another, and then go from there. After all, we both built our relationship around a couple of giant lies.”

“I know what a clean slate is,” Bella said as she pulled away from Edward. He let her go. 

“Well?” Edward asked after a moment of silence.

“I know that I’m going to regret this, but okay,” Bella said after giving it some thought. 

Edward stuck his hand out at Bella. “Edward Cullen. I’m famous for being famous and my mum runs a massive criminal empire in England.”

“Bella Swan. I was trained to be an assassin from the time that I was twelve,” Bella said as she shook Edward’s hand. “But then, I really messed a job up, and I work for an insurance call center.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Bella. Would you like to grab a cup of tea?”

“I’d really like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading. This is, indeed, the end of the story.
> 
> If you enjoyed this, please take a second to leave me a review and/or some kudos.
> 
> Also, if anybody is interested, I am working on another Twilight AU: a futuristic space dystopia. I'm in the middle of Nanowrimo right now, but I should be able to continue to work on this story at the end of the month.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading; I hope that you enjoyed it. This was looked over briefly by Lady_Vyxen, but if you spotted any errors, please let me know.
> 
> And a big thank you to Lady_Vyxen for looking this over and for helping me to bounce ideas around. I don't think that I would have gotten up enough inspiration to start up this project again, let alone to get it to the point where I wanted to put it up online, if it wasn't for you. :)


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